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HUNTERS OF OCEAN 
DEPTHS 


BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 


TO. 5. Service Series 

Illustrated. Large 12mo. Cloth. Price $1.75 each. 

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY 
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HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


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Alexander Agassiz on U. S. S. Albatross in Tropical Pacific, 
Watching the Arrival on Deck of a Deep-Sea Trawl. 













HUNTERS OF OCEAN 

DEPTHS 


By 

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

Author of "U. S. Service Series 


WITH SIXTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND PRINTS 




BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

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COFYRIGHT, I925, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co 



All Rights Reserved 


Hunters of Ocean Depths 


Printed in U. S. A. 


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BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 


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PREFACE 


Down, far down, in the eternal dark, at a depth 
of thousands of fathoms beneath the surface of the 
ocean, is a world almost unknown. Only within very 
recent years has any knowledge of the life in that 
profound abyss come to the ken of Man. Only by 
great oceanographical expeditions, equipped with 
highly complicated scientific instruments, can fur¬ 
ther problems be solved. 

The conditions of life in the ocean depths are not 
only extraordinary in themselves, giving rise to 
strange creatures, but they are so far removed from 
terrestrial life as to give a sense of something weird 
and remote. Even the microscopic life of the sea is 
as astonishing as it is beautiful. 

What is the bottom of the ocean like? How can 

fish live at a pressure which would crush a steel safe 

flat like a pancake? What are the strange and 

ghostly lights which gleam in that perpetual night? 

How and where do the teeming millions of the sea’s 

population find their food? How did the oceans 

come to be, and what strange forces still whirl them 

hither and thither in vast currents? To these and 

a score of other questions, oceanographers have given 

5 


6 


PREFACE 


the answers. To reveal this scarce-known world, 
and to show the part that American scientists are 
playing in its exploration, is the aim and purpose of 

The Author. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 


A Duel of Monsters - 

- 

- 

- 

11 

CHAPTER II 

Oyster and Octopus - 




42 

CHAPTER III 
Captured by a Turtle 

— , 



67 

CHAPTER IY 

Lost in the Sargasso Sea - 

f 




96 

CHAPTER Y 

A Searchlight Rescue 



m9 

114 

CHAPTER YI 
Tales of a Lost World 

•a 



137 

CHAPTER YII 

Pirate Gold - 




164 

CHAPTER YIII 
The Derelict’s Secret 



. 

197 

CHAPTER IX 
The Ghostly Lights 


m 


226 

CHAPTER X 
In the Hot River 



m 

253 

CHAPTER XI 
The Iceberg Rear 


m 

m 

286 


7 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Alexander Agassiz on U. S. S. Albatross . ( Frontispiece) 

FACING PAGE 

“And the Seas Swarmed with Life ”. 40 

Small Portion of Skin of Cachalot. 41 

Dead Cachalot. 41 

Microscopic One-Celled Animal. 66 

Radiolaria. 67 

Prince of Monaco. 72 

The Monaco Museum. 72 

Lifting the Pelagic Trawl. 73 

Raising the Big Plankton Net. 73 

t 

Below a Thousand Fathoms.136 

Electric Drive Deep-Sea Sounding.137 

Sounding and Trawling on Board the Challenger . 182 

Sir Wyville Thomson.183 

Sir John Murray.183 

“ Heaving the Lead ” in a Modern Way .... 188 

Fishes from the very Profoundest Deeps .... 189 

What the Bottom of the Shallow Seas Looks Like . 192 

There May be a Million of these in a Quart of Sea- 

Water .193 


8 
















ILLUSTRATIONS 9 

Pteropod Ooze.208 

J 

Globigerina Ooze.208 

Two of the Principal Foraminifera.209 

A Flower-Animal from the Sea-Bottom.218 

Nets for Catching Sea-Creatures too Small to be 

seen with the Naked Eye.219 

Half a Million at Each Haul.219 

Strange Forms of a Strange World—the World of 

Jellyfish.244 

Radiolaria, Variously Magnified.245 

/ 

The Tiny Creatures which set the Ocean Agleam . 252 

Some Brilliant Light-Givers of the Deep .... 253 

He Carries his Own Electric Light.270 

Lit up like an Atlantic Liner.270 

Deep-Sea Fish with Luminous Organs.271 

Very Rare Photograph of the “ Cold Wall ” . . . 286 

Some Swimming Squids from the Middle and 

Lower Ocean Depths.287 

The First Iceberg of the Season.292 

Still a Monster, though in Warm Water.292 

Oceanographic Work in Winter.293 

Hove to in a Full Gale.293 



















0 


Hunters of Ocean Depths 


CHAPTER I 

A DUEL OF MONSTERS 

“ Glory! Look at that! He’s got the big fellow 
by the jaw! ” 

“ That snaky arm must be all of eighteen feet 
long! And what suckers! ” 

“ Down they go, once more! ” 

The sea closed over the combat, but, under the 
oily swell, the swirl of water showed that the Titans 
of the ocean were still locked in deadly grapple. 

Bernard’s startled eyes were set in a fixed stare; 
his heart was thumping in excitement. From the 
tense ejaculations of the scientific men around him, 
he realized that it was extremely rare to witness 
such a sight. 

“ There they come again!” exclaimed Nifstrod. 
“ Why doesn’t that cachalot blow? ” 

“ He’s been under water a quarter of an hour al¬ 
ready, hasn’t he, Professor McDree? ” queried Lee, 

the young marine botanist. 

11 


12 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


“ All of that! ” 

The chief of the expedition called up to the 
bridge: 

“ Bring her a wee bit nearer, Cap’n, if you can! ” 

The little naval scout cruiser, U. S. S. Kittiwake, 
edged closer. 

“ He can’t blow! ” declared the famous Norwegian 
ichthyologist. 

“ Why not, Nifstrod? ” 

“ If you’ll notice, Professor McDree, one of the big 
tentacles is right over the blow-hole.” 

The chief whistled softly. 

“ Eh, man, that’s so! ” said he. “ It takes your 
eyes to see a thing like that in this poor light. There 
they plunge for a fourth time! If the cachalot 
doesn’t nip that arm off, he’s not likely to see day¬ 
light again.” 

There was a silence of a few minutes, and terrible 
minutes they must have been for that life-and-death 
clinch under the water. 

“ What’s a cachalot’s breathing limit, Professor? ” 
asked one of the younger men. 

“ Twenty minutes is the longest time I’ve ever 
known a whale to be down, and that was a harpooned 
bottle-nose. I suppose thirty minutes would be the 
limit in an extremity. If yon squid should happen 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 13 

to shift his tentacle an inch one way or t’other, the 

whale would have a chance; if not-! ” 

“ But, Professor,” queried Bernard, “ a squid 
couldn’t eat a whale, could it? ” 

“ It could get a hearty meal, at the least, my boy. 
The calcareous beak of a decapod as big as yon 
squid could rip up the hide of a whale without any 
trouble at all. I’ve found beaks of squid between 
five and six inches in length in the stomach of a 
whale, and fearsome-looking implements they are, 
too.” 

He turned to the Norwegian. 

“ Yes, Nifstrod; what is it? ” 

“ There seems to be a big flurry under the water. 
See the bubbles? ” 

“The death-flurry, probably. Well, I’m sorry! 
My sympathies were with the whale; it’s a more 
human sort of beast. In any case, we couldn’t have 
seen much more; it’s getting dark.” 

He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. 

“You’re certainly in luck, Bernard! This is my 
ninth oceanographical cruise, and Nifstrod, here, has 
been on more than twenty, and neither of us ever 
had a glimpse of such a fight before. Yet you tum¬ 
ble upon the sight on your very first trip! Why, 
even the Prince of Monaco, who has spent a fortune 



14 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

in deep-sea study, never had such a chance. He 
came no nearer than witnessing a harpooned whale 
eject the fragments of a squid it had just swallowed, 
but, even from those pieces, science learned a good 
deal.” 

“ I wish I could have seen the end of the scrap, 
though! ” declared Bernard, regretfully. 

“ Why don’t you dive down and take a look? ” 

Bernard eyed the sea. 

“ I am a pretty good diver,” he suggested, almost 
as though he were considering the suggestion seri¬ 
ously. 

“Perhaps! But I wouldn’t advise you to make 
too close acquaintance with Architeuthis Dux,” the 
Professor rejoined with a smile. “ You’d just make 
a nice sandwich for him between two bites of whale. 
Besides, you can be sure that he’s pulling yon cacha¬ 
lot downwards, and you’d have to dive a good deal 
farther than you’d want to go. The Giant Squid 
doesn’t like finding himself near the surface of the 
water. He’s all for the deepness and the dark.” 

“ But we really saw so little of the fight! ” 

“ Get Chu Ting to make you a picture of it, then. 
Or,” Professor McDree added, “ if you can get him 
to talk, he’ll give you a description a hundred times 
more striking than any impression you’d have got 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 15 

for yourself, even had you been able to watch every 
minute of the combat.” 

The Chinese artist of the expedition, who had 
been standing with his arms on the rail, absorbed in 
the fleeting glimpses of that duel of the sea-mon¬ 
sters, bowed at the compliment, but, as usual, said 
nothing. Bernard made no comment, for, on board 
the Kittiwake, it was a proverb that Chu Ting spoke 
only once a month, indeed there were some of the 
scientific workers who had never heard him utter a 
word, though he had the reputation of being a pow¬ 
erful speaker when he chose. 

Six bells rang and the men separated to get ready 
for dinner, half an hour later. This was generally a 
very necessary preparation, for deep-sea dredging 
and trawling, in rough weather, is dirty work. 
Many of the scientists had been busy with the dis¬ 
section of rare fish brought up in the nets, others 
with measurements and examination of the bottom 
ooze, and yet others with highly delicate chemical 
experiments.. Certainly there was no idle person on 
board. Even Bernard had his work. 

As usual, after dinner, the scientists gathered aft, 
each in his deck-chair. This regular meeting formed 
what was known on board by the somewhat irrev¬ 
erent name of the “ Chin Club,” but it served a very 


16 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

important purpose. Every evening, each man briefly 
summarized the result of the day’s investigations 
in his own department; and, since all oceanograph¬ 
ical work must be interrelated in the various de¬ 
partments, the evening talks of the “ Chin Club ” 
often led to valuable scientific results. 

The day of the ocean duel had not produced any 
sensational “ find,” and reports were brief. Indeed, 
some of the scientists were beginning to stir, either 
to go back to their microscopes or perhaps to turn 
in—for many hours of exacting work in a small 
steamer on a tossing sea is extremely fatiguing— 
when, from out the dark, there came a soft sing¬ 
song voice, using English of the most curious pre¬ 
cision : 

“ Does not any one speak of the great battle of 
the deep? ” 

The group of oceanic explorers hushed on the in¬ 
stant, struck dumb with astonishment and anticipa¬ 
tion. 

Was Chu Ting really going to talk? It seemed 
so, for he went on: 

“ Beautiful, indeed, are the tiny forms of life we 
find in the sea, and magical do they seem under a 
microscope; but size has its grandeur, also. The 
battles of the mighty are surely more imposing than 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 17 

the battles of the insignificant. Ah! It paints it¬ 
self, that duel of the giants! ” 

Chu Ting’s hand shot to his breast pocket, where 
he always carried a little book of Chinese paper- 
colors, for, as a rule, he spoke more readily in paint 
than in words. But dark had fallen, and the “ Chin 
Club ” held its regular sessions with no other light 
than that of the red pin-point of a cigarette, the 
glow of a cigar, or the ruddy reflection of a pipe. 
Hence the little color-book remained in the artist’s 
pocket. 

“ Every evening, here,” he went on, equably, “ I 
have the honor of hearing what this device has 
brought to light, or what that instrument has re¬ 
vealed. But, if Professor McDree will permit me 
to say so, the eye of the painter is an instrument, 
also. The art of the painter is his proper microscope, 
with which he may see subtleties invisible to the 
untrained eye. 

“ For, look you, gentlemen, you have witnessed 
but a few tumultuous incidents of that battle be¬ 
tween the cachalot and the squid, and that only for. 
a few moments’ time; but I have seen it all, from 
first to last, and done so without diving to the bot¬ 
tom of the sea, as our impetuous young friend Ber¬ 
nard had wished to do.” 


18 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“No one who knows your amazing drawings is 
likely to doubt your powers of seeing what has es¬ 
caped the notice of others,” the chief replied, during 
the pause that followed, and, indeed, the Chinese 
artist’s sketches and paintings of microscopic objects 
were renowned throughout the scientific world. 
“ What you have seen, tell us, Chu Ting; we are all 
ears.” 

“And I am all eyes, perhaps you would say! 
Eyes, and a few fingers to draw and to paint with— 
that is an artist? Is it not so that you think? No 
more than that? Many of the men I met at Har¬ 
vard used to believe so, and some were so impolite 
as to say so. 

“ You will permit me to mention that Science is 
not omniscient—there is also, Art! Vision is a mys¬ 
tery, gentlemen, that you cannot unriddle by any 
dissection of the human eye, however cleverly it may 
be done.” 

The slightly mocking tones hit home. A creaking 
of chairs suggested that some of the scientists had 
moved suddenly, but whether in agreement or re¬ 
sentment was hidden by the dark. 

“ Professor McDree was kind enough to suggest 
that I should give you a description of that combat 
in the deep. He was right. I am the only one on 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 19 

board the Kittiwake who can do so. I am the only 
one who has truly seen. Shall I prove it to you? 

“ I say that I have seen that battle, down, down in 
the ocean depths. I have an inner telescope which 
pierces to a depth where no arrangement of lenses 
will help. Is it imagination? Is it inspiration? 
Let us not dispute over names. I say that I see 
that combat, still. How, it matters not. Let me, 
then, make you see it, too! ” 

He paused a moment, but no one stirred. Every 
one was afraid to break the spell. 

So Chu Ting began, his foreign accent and the 
clipped fervor of his tones making the scene live 
before the eyes of his hearers: 

“ The open sea! An expanse of greasy, blue- 
green movement, with a slow and sluggish swell; 
smooth waves ramping like the undulations of a 
snake, as though below, far, far below, the Primeval 
Kraken, never seen by human eyes, were writhing 
over the ooze of the ocean floor. The crests of the 
rounded waves slipping over down into the greener 
trough, without a curl, without the slightest pallor 
of foam. Waves on a swell, and a whitey-blue sky 
with mares'-tail wisps of cloud, heralds of coming 
wind. One or two gulls,” the painter's slender 
fingers imitated swiftly the down-stroke of a gull's 


20 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


wings, “ flying low, and, just beyond, the blue trans¬ 
parence of a whirring flying-fish. And that is all! 

“ No, it is not all! Ever the changing sea holds 
some surprise. See! In the near foreground, there! 
Just where the flying-fish has leapt fearfully in air 
on outstretched silver fins! 

“ A shivering column, gray-white, translucent, 
rises from the water, high, quite high, ten, twelve, 
yes sixteen feet in height, a pillar of air and water, 
with prismatic colors trembling on the edge where 
the westering sun strikes sideways through the bub¬ 
bles. 

“ The smooth, oily surface of the sea then slips 
apart, as upheaves a gray-black bulk, huge, ungainly, 
primeval-looking; and floats there, almost sub¬ 
merged, the smooth low billows plashing lazily over 
its back. There he looms, the greatest creature of 
all the seas; greatest of all creatures since the world 
began, for, as you know, gentlemen, even the pre¬ 
historic monsters of the Age of Reptiles could not 
compare in weight and massiveness with the sperm 
whale of to-day. 

“ A colossus of the seas, he is, indeed, but not their 
monarch. A blundering, overgrown fellow, rather, a 
mammal out of his element, not too well adapted to 
a water-life, even yet, despite the centuries that 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 21 

have passed since first his remote ancestors swam in 
the Miocene seas, some millions of years ago. 

“See him, there! That overbrowed, ungainly 
head, nearly one-third the length of the bulky body, 
bumping slowly along at the surface of the sea; a 
lopsided and crooked head, since the single blow-hole 
is on the left side, making the left nostril larger than 
the right. A strange and distorted head, with its 
projecting and up-built snout, seemingly so top- 
heavy and yet but a device for floating, a huge nose 
of fat and oil-cells, for the long, narrow, forward¬ 
pointing skull is far below. And yet it is not alto¬ 
gether impotent, that head, for though the teeth of 
the upper jaw are rudimentary, the lower jaw is 
armed with fifty sharply pointed teeth, of good ivory. 
And, behind the joining of the jaw, are the two small 
beady eyes. 

“ What can he see with his little eyes, deep-sunk 
in fact, that gray-black creature floating on the sur¬ 
face of the sea? Rarely has he seen the sun, save 
when some great danger lashes him to fury and his 
whole head emerges from the water; usually only 
the blow-hole at the very top of his square head 
comes above the surface, and that for breathing, 
only. Of moon and stars, the Great Whale knows 
nothing. 


22 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Above him, in the daytime, is the light of the 
sky, seen through a film of water, a wavering gray¬ 
ish-green white; in front of him, as he floats at or 
near the surface, is the troubled yellow-green of the 
wave-stirred levels of the upper sea. In this green 
dimness, he breathes and sleeps. 

“ But, down below, lies the deep green-black mys¬ 
teriousness of the waters of the abyss. There must 
he go a-hunting, for the toothed whale, like nearly 
every creature which ravens in the sea, must win 
his food by speed, or skill, or by the dreadful issue 
of life-and-death combat. There is no mercy in the 
deep, and no finny fighter cries for quarter. To eat 
one’s neighbors and to be eaten by them at the last 
is a sea-dweller’s whole existence. 

“ To me, as I look at his enormous bulk, his over¬ 
balanced and protruding head, his swollen girth and 
the fingered-flippers so small in proportion to his 
size, I cannot, at the first, picture him as a hunter. 
That massive form suggests a perennial basking on 
the surfaces of lazy seas, not the plunging fury of a 
gigantic beast of prey, speeding to a death duel in 
the watery underworld. 

“ Yet he must eat, that cachalot, whom we never 
see save when he is floating idly at the surface, alone, 
or with a school of his ponderous mates. He cannot 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 


23 


cruise slowly along the surface, like his cousin the 
Right Whale, sucking in shoals of small food by 
filtering great mouthfuls of water through frayed 
whalebone fibres. Look at his teeth! They tell a 
different story. 

“ For him, the world holds little of lazy sauntering. 
His life is a life of strife. He must win his food by 
battle, and a warm-blooded creature, such as he is, 
must eat enormously. He must find that food, too, 
in a hunting territory where it is always dark, and 
where all his purposed victims move exceeding 
swiftly. How, with his small black eyes, can he find 
enough to eat, the Mighty One, when all the little 
fish, faster swimmers than he, can scatter and dart 
in all directions, too speedily for his great bulk to 
follow? 

“ Where can he go, the Great Sperm Whale, to 
find a meal worthy of his huge body, almost eighty 
feet in length? So mighty a creature must have a 
mighty prey! Somewhere, then, in the dark recesses 
of the watery abyss, there must lurk giant forms 
worthy of his questing. 

“ What manner of monsters can these be? What 
strange hunting goes on continuously in those far- 
hidden regions of the eternal ocean? Can your tele¬ 
scopes, gentlemen, pierce to those depths? Do your 


24 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

drag-nets, even of the latest pattern, bring them to 
the surface? 

“ Let the eye of vision be added to the eye of 
outer sight. So shall we learn to see.” 

The slightly sing-song Chinese accent deepened. 

“ Out through the S-shaped blow-hole of the 
Mighty Whale, the column of air rises again. It 
lifts to a little higher than before, for all the air 
must be blown out of those tremendous lungs, that 
a new supply may reach to the uttermost cavity. It 
may be needed, for there are times—though these 
be rare—that the Cachalot must go down three thou¬ 
sand feet to find his prey, and there may be fighting 
to be done. 

“ The column of expired air diminishes and dis¬ 
appears. I hear the sucking indraught of the air 
which must be held, so long held, during all the 
hunt below. The great body rises a little higher in 
the water as the cavernous lungs fill. 

“ Slowly the head turns downwards as the nostrils 
close beneath the blow-hole. Here is seen no clumsy 
shouldering half out of the water as does the Hump- 
Back Whale, no swift cleaving of the billows like the 
Fin-Back Whale. Silently and smoothly, scarce 
leaving even a slick on the surface of the sea, the 
huge back of the Sperm Whale disappears. Leaving 



A DUEL OF MONSTERS 25 

behind him the greenish-white glimmer of daylight 
just beneath the surface, his vast form plunges, 
down, down towards the dark. 

“ Follow him down! 

“Ah! What is that? 

“ A deep brown staining of the water, bronze-like 
in the deepening green, colored like a chrysoprase. 
Only a cloud of jelly-fish, of trailing medusae; rich 
food, these, for a whalebone whale, but useless to 
our toothed Cachalot who requires a more substan¬ 
tial diet. He spurns the jellyfish, and mocks at 
their stinging tentacles. The sweeping screw-like 
strokes of his great tail-flukes churn hundreds of the 
frail medusa-forms to shapeless pulp, as the Mighty 
One sounds down, and ever down. 

“Two hundred fathoms (1,200 feet) deep! It is 
not yet quite dark, but only a few of the red or 
yellow rays of sunlight have penetrated so far, and 
the light is a ghostly and unearthly blue. Startled 
fishes dart to every side as the great Cachalot plunges 
downward. Even the hungriest and most daring of 
the larger predatory creatures of the deeper waters 
keep well away from the descending rush of a hunt¬ 
ing whale, whose eight-foot mouth is rimmed by 
fifty gleaming teeth. 

“ Three hundred fathoms deep! Here, or here- 


26 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

abouts, is the Sperm Whale’s true hunting-ground. 
This is not far from the edge of the eternal dark. 
Perhaps some finny slayer with well-developed eyes 
may be able to detect a darker shadow swifting by, 
in that shadow-world of sombre peacock-blue, but, 
to the Cachalot, it is as darkest night. He has 
reached his hunting-ground, but how will he find his 
prey? 

“ Already it is colder than the surface water he 
left a couple of minutes back, very nearly twice as 
cold. Well for him that he has his overcoat of blub¬ 
ber, for the lower strata of the sea come far too 
close to freezing for a warm-blooded mammal such 
as he. But Nature has protected him, and cold can 
scarcely penetrate that layer of oily fat. 

“ How, in that boundless world of dark, cold 
water, can he pursue his way? Peer as he will, he 
cannot see; the faint gleam of those blue rays which 
filter through the green water overhead will show 
him naught. He cannot move by scenting, for the 
Sperm Whale does not smell; his olfactory organs 
are but rudimentary. Nor can he feel, as do certain 
sea-forms with long and sensitive antennae, and he 
has no sense of touch. Not even does he possess 
those strange sense-organs which are found in the 
lateral-line nerve system of fishes. 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 27 

“ But can he hear? Truly, there are two tiny ear- 
holes, far back, close behind the eyes. Can these 
mean anything? Observe them well! The orifice 
is small, but the inner ear is designed for hearing, 
built like a shell, to catch the slightest sound and to 
perceive the faintest vibrations in the water. 

“ The Mighty One halts in his descent, flukes and 
flippers motionless. 

“ Keep still, 0 all ye creatures of the middle 
deep! Move neither tail nor fin! The Great Whale 
is among you, hungry and listening. 

“ One flipper stroke partly turns the huge body, 
in the deep water no longer unwieldy, but responsive 
to the slightest effort. That inner shell-shaped ear, 
keen to catch the slightest outspreading wave of 
movement, has received some faint message of an¬ 
other presence. 

“ Something dared to stir! 

“ There! It was down there! 

“ A swirl of the great lateral-shaped flukes, and, 
with a sweeping downward glide of tremendous force 
and speed, the Great Whale rushes open-mouthed 
through the darkness at the prey he cannot see. 

“A jet of water in the water itself brings him 
another signal. It came from near! Something is 
quite close by! 


28 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“Unseen to the Cachalot, the Something stirs 
again! 

“ A monstrous nightmare creature, spawned of 
the dark and of his own hideous ancestry, darts back 
a dozen yards, and waits vindictively. A vile thing, 
this! 

“ A body half as long as that of the Great Whale, 
with writhing tentacles larger than any python that 
earthly jungle ever saw, a sickly pallid squashiness 
of unhealthy pinkish flesh, splotched with black; 
malevolent, repulsive and actively most evil. A 
misshapen form, with vicious and malignant head 
amid its writhing tentacles, armed with a parrot- 
beak able to shear through steel, and two huge, un¬ 
blinking, ink-black eyes, so highly developed as to 
be able to catch those faint rays of peacock-blue 
light, eyes that stare and frighten. A hideous mon¬ 
ster of which lesser denizens of the deep may well 
stand in awe. 

“ Beware, 0 Mighty Diver of the Seas, for your 
foe can see, and you cannot! 

“ Beware, 0 Cachalot, for though the Devil of 
the Deep fears you and you alone, it is an evil 
fighter, and a dangerous! 

“ Well knows the Great Sperm Whale the tactics 
of this battle. The Giant Squid, great Architeuthis 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 


29 


Dux , chiefest of all the cuttle-fish, can dart back¬ 
wards with astounding speed, but can change its di¬ 
rection far less easily. 

“ Could the Cachalot but catch his evil foe a-nap- 
ping, then for a mouthful of that yielding body, and 
away! But the Giant Squid is no sleeper, and that 
soft gristly body is well protected by the eight huge 
tentacles which grow about its head, and by the two 
still longer arms, all powerfully weaponed with 
ridged suckers. 

“ Watch them as they wait—one, the biggest of 
all living creatures, and the other, the foulest of all 
horrid forms begotten since the world began. Such 
is a duel to stir the blood! Never in Roman arena 
did such colossal gladiators meet, never has sunlight 
looked upon a comparable fight! 

“ For a few seconds, the Great Whale hesitates. 
Largest of all sea creatures he may be, but the Giant 
Squid is a dreadful antagonist to meet, face to face. 
Yet breath will soon be growing short, and it is a 
long way to the surface. There is no time to waste. 
Moreover, hunger drives, for this is the Great 
Whale’s tenth dive without finding a bite of food. 
The fight must be! His dinner is the death of his 
prey, or it is his own. 

" See! He speeds to the conflict! 


30 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ The powerful flukes and flippers strike the water 
with all the muscular force of the great cetacean, the 
mouth gapes wide, showing his lower jaw bristling 
with teeth, and, with a battering rush, the Great 
Whale launches himself upon his prey. 

“ Again the Giant Squid darts back, but this time 
to a posture of defence and not in mere alarm. For, 
as his mighty foe hurls forward, the eight ridged 
tentacles of the Devil of the Deep lash out in all 
their clutching and encircling sweep. 

“The jaws of the Great Whale snap together! 
His fifty teeth bite through a tentacle fifteen feet 
long and eight inches through at the base. This 
mouthful will stay his hunger, and, on the instant, 
knowing his awful danger, the flukes swirl screw-like 
and the great head turns upwards, seeking the air, 
to breathe. 

“ Too late for such escape, 0 Cachalot; too late! 

“ The Devil of the Deep is ready! 

“ Those black unwinking eyes, inky pools of 
hatred, are watching his slightest move. Scarce 
have the whale’s jaws closed on the dismembered 
tentacle, than five of the other seven snake-like 
lengths of muscled power and the two whip-like 
arms wind about him like a coil of doom. The suck¬ 
ers clamp upon his leathery skin, and one thick 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 


31 


tentacle snaps under his jaw and binds it in a hellish 
grip. The other tentacles lash out on either side, in 
hope to find something whereon to hold. 

“ Should there be rock or reef near by, it would 
mean the whale's swift death, for nothing that lives 
on earth or in the water, no creature ever born since 
the world began, can tear away the hold of the 
Giant Squid. 

“ Fortune favors the Cachalot. There is nothing 
that the Devil of the Deep may grasp. 

“ Jerking his square head upwards, despite the 
half-ton weight of the Giant Squid constricting his 
head and jaws, the Great Whale calls on the muscles 
of his mighty body, and the flukes beat in a pound¬ 
ing rhythm. But not so fast! 

“ The Monstrous Cuttle-Fish, sucking in great 
volumes of water beneath its mantle-skirt, ejects 
them in great jets from its thrice-muscled siphon, 
giving a jerking backward propulsion which drags 
the Whale’s head down. No sooner does the Great 
Cetacean point his head upward and surge forward 
a fathom or two, than the siphon jet, expelled with 
incredible force, drags it back to the horizontal, or 
even lower. 

“ Yet is the Cachalot the stronger, still. 

“ Ordinarily, he can reach the surface from a 


32 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

three-hundred fathom depth in a couple of minutes. 
Now, with the Giant Squid hanging to his head, he 
drives upwards but very slowly. He has been under 
water a quarter of an hour, now, and his great tail- 
strokes, given with all his might, are telling heavily 
on his breath. 

“ For this is the real fight, as the Devil of the 
Deep knows well. It cannot hope to crush its gi¬ 
gantic foe with its tentacles, nor yet to tear his vitals 
with the parrot-like beak. No! But if it can hold 
the whale beneath the water long enough, that Titan 
of the seas must drown. 

“ Fright and consternation reign in the middle 
deep. For hundreds of yards in every direction, the 
vibrations set whirling by the appalling struggle 
throb through the water, and the panic-stricken fish 
scurry madly away. Only the slow swimmers come 
within the radius of the fearful wrestle of the sea- 
monsters, and none of these have eyes sufficiently 
developed to be able to see that duel to the death. 

“ The powerful strokes of the flukes drive on, and 
steadily the Great Whale drags his unwilling captive 

9 

and captor to the surface. True, the Devil of the 
Deep might let go, with the loss of but one arm. 
Yet, despite the Giant Decapod’s rudimentary in¬ 
telligence, instinct teaches that the tooth-ranged 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 33 

jaw of its foe is closed, and will stay closed as long 
as the tentacles do not relax their grip. 

“ Up, up and ever up! 

“ The lungs of the whale are near to bursting, and 
he is only at the level of the brown medusae. The 
light is growing clearer, though, and the whale knows 
well that at the upper edge of that pale green world 
above him is where he can find the breath which is 
his life. 

“ The Many-Armed knows it, too, and the jets of 
water from the siphon pulse quicker and stronger. 
This is a crucial minute of the fight. The wearied 
whale can no longer give the great strokes of the 
beginning, and the upward pace grows slower and 
ever slower. Twenty minutes down, and still fifty 
fathoms to reach the surface! 

“ The steadily increasing light gives courage and 
hope, while the loss of breath breeds that despera¬ 
tion whence comes the strength to call out the last 
reserve of force. The tiny eyes of the Great Whale 
can begin to see his foe, and, in their beady depths, 
one can perceive agony and distress within, for the 
mammal has a brain and can know what it is to 
fear. 

“ Up, Great Whale, summon the last of your 
strength! You have but a minute or two more! 


34 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ The Giant Squid is tiring, too. The siphon jets 
are weakening. 

“Up! Once more! 

“ Up! 

“ There is the light, and air! 

“ The blow-hole of the Great Whale pierces above 
the surface, and the expiration jet of the condensed 
air shoots eighteen feet in air. What relief! What 
marvellous relief! 

“ But, before he can fill his lungs again, the Squid 
drags him below the surface. A few feet below, 
only, and there the struggle becomes yet more des¬ 
perate. His vast lungs empty of air, the Great 
Whale is less buoyant. The slightest change of bal¬ 
ance will decide the issue. 

“ The Cachalot rises once, holds his place for a 
few brief seconds by frantic tail-strokes which churn 
the water into foam; he gets a half-breath. 

“ Watch for yourself, now, Devil of the Deep! 

“ The air goes through and oxygenates the blood 
of the half-exhausted mammal. Strength comes 
back partly to the Mighty Whale. 

“ Now is his time! If he can but shake off these 
encumbering and crushing tentacles which hold him 
in a constricting grip! 

“ Strongly, he drags his enemy to the surface, and 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 35 

fills his lungs to the uttermost with the life-giving 
air. 

“ The Giant Squid feels the strength coursing 
through the huge body of its foe. It dare not let go, 
now, for well it knows that long, long before it could 
reach the darkness of the deeper water, the Great 
Whale would be upon it from above, and, this time, 
able to see and to tear it to pieces in enormous 
mouthfuls. 

“ There is one only hope—to hold its grip. And 
yet, what hope is there? Sooner or later, it must 
relax. Death, a horrid piecemeal death, is sure, but 
it will fight to the end. 

“ Can fear be known to such a primitive creature 
as a Squid, merely a monstrous shellfish, after all, 
one that has lost its shell? But let no one doubt 
that it can fight, none the less, and those ink-black, 
glaring eyes look horribly, inhumanly intelligent. 

“ The Cachalot, refreshed and vigorous again, sure 
of his victory, and equally certain of a meal worthy 
of his enormous bulk, has but to shake off those en¬ 
circling tentacles, which bind his jaws close shut. 
He sinks a few feet, gathers energy for a tremendous 
effort, and drives his flukes into the water with such 
terrific force that the whole of his great head shoots 
clear. Then down, with his whole weight, jarring 


36 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

the tentacles upon the surface of the water with a 
shock of half a ton. 

“ The suckers do not budge, yet must the shock 
have weakened them, for the two free tentacles are 
also thrown about his head, and all seven arms hold 
him fast. 

“ At the same instant, the beak of the Giant 
Squid, which lies amid its tentacles, comes close to 
the Great Whale’s snout. There is a snap and a 
crunch. A wound gapes open and the red blood 
flows. 

“ The flesh and blubber instantly reach the sim¬ 
ple pouch-like stomach of the Devil of the Deep. 
A small eater, this food gives it a swift renewal of 
strength. The sudden increase of force in the siphon 
jet warns the Great Whale of his adversary’s added 
power, and the pain of the wound drives him to 
greater fury. 

“ Again he surges upward, head out of the water, 
and again strikes down. Ah! That was a blow! 

“ One of the clinging tentacles is battered from 
its hold. For a second, only, for it lashes out in¬ 
stantly, only to get a firmer grip on another place. 

“ Once more the parrot-beak snaps forward, 
shearing skin and flesh, and a second wound reddens 
the sea. They are not dangerous, these wounds, for 


A DUEL OF MONSTERS 


37 


all the upper part of the head of the sperm whale 
is but a reservoir of blubber cells and oils, but the 
injuries are galling to the nerves, and weakening, 
from loss of blood. 

“ There is more danger, still. The blood may at¬ 
tract the Killer Whales from far, and, as the Great 
Cachalot knows well, the coming of the little Killer 
Whales would mean the instant death of both grim 
combatants. 

“ Thinking that speed may perhaps help, the 
Great Whale rushes forward at his utmost pace, hop¬ 
ing that the drag of the water will weaken the pres¬ 
sure of those unyielding tentacles. It is in vain! 
The sucking clutch resists. Yet there is a moment 
of relief, for, at that speed, the Giant Squid can do 
no more than hold on tightly, and dare not try to 
snap out with that vicious beak again. 

“ But speed takes breath, and the Giant Whale is 
getting breathed. He prepares to blow. 

“ Then—terror! 

“ A sudden and awful fear! 

“ In that last shifting of the tentacles, one of 
the suckers of the Devil of the Deep has lashed out 
across and closed upon the blow-hole. 

“ He cannot breathe! 

“ Now, indeed, the Great Whale turns to panic. 


38 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

His breath is his life. He is no fish, to breathe the 
water by means of gills. He is an animal, a water¬ 
dwelling mammal with lungs, and so, and only so, 
can he live by breathing. 

“ He must get free! 

“ His great heart beats faster in the sudden terror, 
the blind terror of the hunted animal. Unless that 

tentacle can be released-! 

“ Far different are his plungings and his short 
dives, now! To right, to left, up into the air, down 

with a sudden rush, flippers and tail-flukes working 

* 

in the maddest flurry, the Great Whale fights for 
life, fights to move that binding tentacle even one 
inch away from the blow-hole. 

“ Is the Devil of the Deep conscious of the change 
which the chance lashing of a tentacle has given it? 

“ That is too much to ascribe to the intelligence 
of a mollusc, for mollusc that monster is, despite its 
giant size and its eyes of an unblinking fiend. 
Maybe it knows, in that dim realm which we call 
instinct, that its foe is weakening. But it does not 
know why. Blind chance has favored it. How 
many hundreds of its ten-armed brethren had al¬ 
ready passed into the Great Whale’s stomach! Are 
they, now, to be revenged? 

“ Panic is a poor ally. The mad rushes of the 



A DUEL OF MONSTERS 39 

Great Whale tire him, he is choked for lack of 
breath. 

“ For a single second he pauses, and, immediately, 
a third great wound is swiftly ripped by the ever- 
ready beak. 

“ There is a wild surge of resistance, but the 
siphon-jet, which the Giant Squid has not troubled 
to use during all this mad racing to and fro, begins 
to work anew, and drags the head of the Giant 
Whale below the water. 

“Yet still he tries to rise, the heart-bursting 
Cachalot, and so irresistible are the efforts of that 
giant of the seas, that he reaches to the surface once 
again. 

“ It is in vain! 

“ The air is there! The life-giving air! 

“ But the sucker on the tentacle of the Devil of 
the Deep closes the blow-hole tightly, and the air 
can neither go out nor in. 

“ Little by little, the coursing blood in the whale’s 
heart and arteries, unpurified by contact with the 
air, grows more and more empoisoned by itself. The 
movements of the Cachalot grow sluggish. 

“ He is suffocating. 

“ Is the Giant Squid conscious? Never a sign will 
show in those uncanny and cruel eyes. 


40 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


“ The pulsing strokes of the siphon begin anew, 
and this time, they play the stronger part. 

“ Slowly, slowly, down to the darker and the colder 
depths of the sea, the Ten-Armed Devil draws his 
mighty foe, the movements of whose flippers and 
whose flukes grow ever more and more feeble. 

“ Down through the shoal of brown jellyfish, 
down into the region of the blue-black dark, is 
dragged the massive bulk of the Great Whale, half 
inert, and all but lifeless. 

“ The Giant Squid, now certain of his prey, re¬ 
laxes three of his tentacles, for they are strained and 
wearied by the terrible muscular contraction by 
which it has fought its enemy for more than one 
long hour. 

“ The blow-hole of the Great Whale is uncovered. 

“ Instantly, there surges up through the water a 
torrent of rising bubbles. 

“ The lungs of the whale are free! 

“ If only he were at the surface now! 

“ But the remaining tentacles hold him fast. 

“ The lungs can endure no more. 

“ Unconscious, suffocating, the Cachalot draws in 
a mighty inspiration. 

“ Ah, Poor Whale, that is not air, but water! 

“ The lungs fill. The Great Whale drowns. 



Zoea, or baby form of the common crab, magnified 20 times. 



The transparent arrow-worm, twice natural size. 



Baby stage of 
barnacle, magnified 
30 times. 


Older stage of 
barnacle, magnified 
30 times. 


The Copepod 
Oithona, magnified 
10 times. 


Courtesy of Edward Arnold & Co. 

“And thk Seas Swarmed with Life.” 







Small Portion of the Skin of a Cachalot, Showing Marks of 

Combat with a Giant Squid. 



Courtesy of Macmillan Co. 


Dead Cachalot, Showing the Long and Deep White Stripes Cut 
into the Skin by the Tentacles of the Giant Squid. Their 
Enormous Length May Be Judged by These 
Unbroken Lines of Wounding: Evidences 
of a Terrific Fight. 



A DUEL OF MONSTERS 


41 


“ And, far below, in the darkness and the coldness 
of the abyss, the Devil of the Deep malignantly en¬ 
joys his feast.’" 


CHAPTER II 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 

“ But I don’t get hold of the idea, at all, Mr. 
Bower! ” declared Bernard, after breakfast, the next 
morning, his tired eyes betraying that he had been 
puzzling over the matter most of the night. “ Chu 
Ting said yesterday that the Giant Squid is a 
mollusc! ” 

“ So it is, Bernard; what then? ” 

“ But a mollusc’s a thing like an oyster or a clam, 
or something of that sort! ” 

“ An oyster is certainly a mollusc, if that’s what 
you mean.” 

“ Well, a squid, big or little, isn’t the least bit 
like an oyster! ” 

“ Oh, yes, he is, my boy. He’s fully as much like 
an oyster as a monkey is like a whale.” 

The expert on invertebrates smiled at the boy’s 
evident bewilderment at this comparison. The two 
were very good friends, for Bower’s brother was one 
of the great lights in the baseball world, and, in 
Bernard’s eyes, some of the reflected glory shone on 

any member of “ Batter Bower’s ” family. 

42 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 43 

“ If you’ve time to wait a few minutes/’ the sci¬ 
entist went on, “ I’ll show you.” 

“ I can wait,” assented Bernard. “ The Pro¬ 
fessor’s busy writing reports this morning; he doesn’t 
need me.” 

Bower nodded. He was superintending the lower¬ 
ing of one of the abyssal drag-trawls, for finding out 
just what kind of creatures really do live at the bot¬ 
tom of the ocean, and, save for instructions to the 
sailors, he made no further remark until the req¬ 
uisite depth of 3,000 metres had been reached and 
the huge cable-laid piano-wire line had been made 
fast. This was a delicate operation, for such a length 
of line meant a terrific strain. 

The operation concluded, the zoologist beckoned 
the boy to come to his ‘ 1 bench,” as each of the tiny 
laboratories on board the Kittiwake was called. 
From under a pile of pencil drawings and anatomical 
sketches, he reached out a big flat book, full of 
biological figures. 

“ They look hard to you, I suppose, Bernard? ” 
he queried, ruffling the pages. “ About as hard as 
the letters of the Chinese alphabet might look, eh? 
But they’re not so hard as that! This is the zoo¬ 
logical alphabet.” 

“ But with how many letters, Mr. Bower? ” 


44 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

queried the boy, a little staggered by the number 
of designs. 

“ Eighty-one; a letter for each Class. Once you 
know these eighty-one letters, you can read zoology 
like an open book, and every kind of animal—from 
a microscopic protozoon to an elephant—will seem 
like an old friend. 

“ In point of fact, if you’re going to stick to 
oceanographical work, as your father wanted you to 
do, you’ll have to learn these letters some time, and 
the botanical alphabet as well. Now that Chu Ting 
has awakened your interest in the Giant Squid, per¬ 
haps this is as good a time as any for you to find 
out something about them.” 

“ I do want to find out,” declared Bernard, ear¬ 
nestly. “ Before Father died, he told me that he 
considered oceanography the most interesting of all 
modern sciences, that it was the newest and least 
known, and that a fellow had a chance to make his 
name in it. It was mighty good of Professor Mc- 
Dree to take me on board here as a microscopical 
assistant, and I thought I was learning something; 
but I certainly got lost last night, when Chu Ting 
sprang on me the idea that a sixty-foot Squid was 
first cousin to an oyster! ” 

“ I’m not surprised that it staggered you. I’ll ad- 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 45 

mit,” the expert agreed, with a smile, “ certainly the 
habits and the shape of that voracious Devil of the 
Deep you heard about, yesterday evening, don’t sug¬ 
gest those of the harmless oyster; but neither do the 
habits and shape of the Great Whale suggest those 
of a monkey. Yet, as I just suggested to you, the 
types are closely related, as you’d see in a minute 
if you compared the bones in a whale’s flipper and a 
chimpanzee’s hand.” 

“ You won’t mind my saying that I don’t see it a 
bit, not with the squid, anyhow! ” declared Bernard 
stoutly. 

This positiveness was quite in keeping with the 
boy’s character. Ever since he was quite small, the 
lad had been trained to help his father in preparing 
microscope slides, and his fingers were very deft, so 
that his choice as a microscopical assistant had not 
been entirely due to Professor McDree’s personal 
friendship with the family. Moreover, Dr. Webster, 
who had been an eminent pathologist, had taught 
his son to be conscientiously exact in his observa- 
tions, to be sure never to imagine that he had seen 
a thing under the lens unless he had observed it at 
the precise focus and in all its details, and, above all, 
never to say that he understood a statement unless 
he really did understand it thoroughly. 


46 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Why does the resemblance, or, rather, the lack 
of resemblance, puzzle you so? ” the zoologist 
queried, curious to follow the boy’s reasonings. 

“Well! An oyster has a shell, and can’t swim, 
what’s more, it hasn’t any head or arms; a squid 
hasn’t a shell, it can travel through the water mighty 
fast, it’s got a sure-enough head with jaws and eyes 
and all the rest of it, and no less than ten arms into 
the bargain! ” 

The expert leaned back in his chair and lighted 
his pipe in leisurely fashion, meantime putting a 
fossil on the pages of the open book for a paper¬ 
weight. 

“ If it’s a good thing to start from the bottom,” 
he rejoined whimsically, “ you’re in the right posi¬ 
tion to begin learning, Bernard, because you’re wrong 
on pretty nearly everything you say. 

“ Oysters, and some other shellfish of the same 
Class have heads and eyes, nearly all of them are 
able to swim while they are young, and a good many 
have foot-tentacles around their heads—something 
like those of a squid—as you will see for yourself 
once I’ve shown you how to look. 

“ As for the Giant Squid, you’re all wrong about 
him, too! He has a shell, though you can’t see it on 
the outside because it’s of the internal kind; and as 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 47 

for the ‘ arms/ as you call them, they are tentacles 
which are but extensions of a single foot, such as the 
clams and most shellfish possess/’ 

“His ten arms are all part of one foot! You’re 
not fooling, Mr. Bower? ” 

“ Not in the least, my boy! I’m willing to ‘ fool ’ 
on a good many subjects, but never on Science. 
There’s never any need to exaggerate or to do any¬ 
thing to make Science any more exciting than it is; 
all you have to do is to understand it, and then 
you’ll find it exciting enough. 

“ Look here, Bernard! Suppose you didn’t know 
the rules of baseball, and had never seen it played 
before. Even a red-hot major league game would 
only bore you. If you understood it, just a little bit, 
then the game might interest you, mildly. But if 
you were wise enough to understand the subtleties 
of double plays and all the rest of inside baseball, 
then you couldn’t keep your seat on the bleachers 
for excitement. Isn’t that so? ” 

“ It sure is! ” 

“ It’s exactly the same with Science. Don’t im¬ 
agine, for a moment, that zoology is dry! I’ve seen 
a grey-haired scientist go hopping ’round the deck 
from sheer excitement over a discovery which only 
an expert could appreciate, and I’ve seen a whole 


48 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

crowd of us, on board the Michael Sars, too wild 
with the thrill of a ‘ find ’ to be able to go below to 
eat. An outsider would have seen nothing remark¬ 
able, but we knew all the inside workings of the 
game.” 

“ I can see that, all right! ” 

“ You remember what Chu Ting said: that with 
an artist’s eye, you can learn to perceive things 
which you’d never notice without. He’s perfectly 
right, there, and his description of that battle be¬ 
tween the Giant Squid and the Cachalot excited me 
every bit as much as it did you; maybe more, be¬ 
cause I was able to marvel at its exactitude as well 
as to revel in the astonishing vitality and color it 
revealed. 

“ But the scientist’s eye is just as powerful, my 
boy, and, to my thinking, even more wonderful. 
When I look at a worm which builds its tube-house 
while burrowing through the oceanic ooze, or at a 
jellyfish apparently idling along a current but 
really awaiting its chance to sting an unwary passer¬ 
by, or at a copepod with its bewildering array of 
feather-like processes for floating, I see a great deal 
more than the outside of that worm, or that jelly¬ 
fish, or that copepod. 

“ I see his inside at the same time as his outside, 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 


49 


I know what his ancestors were like, I can picture 
how later forms have developed, I’m aware of the 
part he plays in the great scheme of Nature, and I 
can show how even the tiniest and most inconspicu¬ 
ous bit of him fits into every other organism on sea 
or land, as well as into the special conditions of his 
environment. I’m speaking perfectly seriously 
when I say that, if you show me a worm, with the 
scientific eye I can also see an elephant! ” 

“ And, from an oyster, you can see a squid? ” 

“ Very easily. It mightn’t seem such a simple 
chain of development to you, because the various 
Classes of the Mollusca are a bit confusing at first 
sight. But, once you get the clue, you can go right 
along. Let us roll up our sleeves and dig in, my boy; 
nothing is worth doing that isn’t a bit hard to begin 
with, and I’ll cut the complications short. 

“ As a matter of fact, there are five great Classes 
of Mollusca; we’ll run over them quickly. 

“ There are the Chitons, little creatures which 
look a good deal like limpets, but have plates on 
their backs instead of shells. 

“ Next come the Gastropods, a Class containing 
many very different-looking forms, such as the 
limpets, the sea-butterflies, the tritons—a good many 
of the spiral shells you pick up on the beach are 


50 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

tritons—as well as all the different kinds of slugs 
and snails. 

“ The third Class is a small one: the Scaphopoda, 
or burrowers, queer little creatures looking like a 
long tooth or a thin cornucopia; they burrow into 
the ooze or mud at the bottom of the ocean, head¬ 
first, and just leave the tail end of their shells stick¬ 
ing out. 

“ Then comes the Lamellibranchia, a very big 
Class, to which mussels, clams, oysters, and some 
other tens of thousands of shellfish belong. 

“ The fifth and last Class is that of the Cepha¬ 
lopoda, containing such very different forms as the 
pearly nautilus, the squid, the octopus, and the 
argonaut. These Classes make five out of the 
eighty-one letters of the zoological alphabet.” 

“ And they are really related? One wouldn’t ever 
guess it by their looks! ” 

“ Why not? A chiton looks a good deal like a 
limpet, a sea-butterfly isn’t unlike a slug with flaps 
on his back, and a sea-snail suggests a nautilus.” 

“ The oyster and the squid don’t resemble each 
other, just the same,” insisted Bernard, determined 
not to lose sight of the point which had worried him. 

“ Learn to look on the inside, my boy, not on the 
outside! Suppose you didn’t know that clothes 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 51 

could come off and on, and that you saw for the first 
time a silk-petticoated Chinese mandarin and a fur- 
clad Eskimo walrus-hunter, you’d never think that 
those two were the same kind of beast at all; but if 
both were stripped, ready for a swim, you’d see at 
once that there wasn’t so much difference between 
them. Skins are a kind of natural clothing. 

“ Shells, if you want to put it that way, are a 
good deal like clothes, or like skin. Put a shell on 
a slug, and you’ve got something that looks a good 
deal like a crawling snail; take the shell off a snail, 
and you’ve a reasonably good idea of a slug. And, 
if you started to dissect the two, you’d see the re¬ 
semblance even closer.” 

“ That’s clear enough,” the boy admitted. “ But 
an octopus and an oyster! ” 

“ Don’t go off at score again! Let us take the 
thing quietly, Bernard. Biology isn’t really so diffi¬ 
cult. It’s a lot easier than it appears to the out¬ 
sider. 

“ Let us take a look at the external characters of 
the Molluscs, Outside appearances are not the 
surest, nor always the clearest signs for classification, 
but they’re the quickest to see, just as it’s easy 
enough to realize that the main external character 
of a quadruped is that it has four feet and of a bird 


52 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

that it has a feathered wing. Are you ready to be 
introduced to the Molluscs? ” 

“ Quite! ” 

“ Here goes, then! You will know a Mollusc by 
his possession of four characteristic organs: the 
single foot, the ctenidia or breathing apparatus, 
which take the place of the gills in fishes; and the 
radula, which you can think of as a forerunner of 
jaws. 

“ Most Mollusca are bilaterally symmetrical, that 
is to say, they resemble human beings in being dif¬ 
ferent on the back and the front (dorsally and 
ventrally), and in being alike on each side. Man is 
built that way, as you can see if you think for a 
moment, having a backbone in the back, stomach 
and intestines in front, but with two arms, two legs, 
and so forth; he is not entirely symmetrical, how¬ 
ever, since the heart is on one side. This mars his 
symmetry. 

“ That much ought to be clear. Any time that 
you find a creature with a mantle and a shell, a 
single foot, ctenidia and radula, those four things, 
and generally with bilateral symmetry, you can be 
perfectly sure that you’re looking at a mollusc; just 
as sure as that any time you find a creature with a 
backbone you know it’s a vertebrate, or any time you 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 53 

get hold of a creature with a feathered wing, you 
know it’s a bird.” 

“ If that’s all, Mr. Bower, I could spot a Mollusc 
all right, then! ” 

“ You could, if all the Mollusca had these four 
characters in a perfect form, but they haven’t. 
Many Gastropods, for example, are twisted all out 
of shape, while the Cephalopods have nearly lost 
their shells. The rudiments are generally there, 
however. When you find some creature with two 
or three of these Molluscan characters, examine him 
a bit closely, and you’ll generally find some sign of 
the others, though it may puzzle you sometimes, as, 
for instance, to trace a Gastropod’s head.” 

“ But haven’t Molluscs a real head? ” queried 
Bernard. “ Some of them have eyes, that’s sure— 
look at the Giant Squid! And eyes don’t come any¬ 
where except in a proper head, do they? ” 

“ That depends a good deal on what you mean by 
a ‘ proper head/ and by an ‘ eye ’! ” the zoologist 
replied. “ Plenty of creatures have organs of vision 
which have no definite head—in the sense you mean 
—and any number of creatures with a well-devel¬ 
oped head—abyssal fish, for example—are blind. 
Strictly speaking, any creature which has the front 
part of its body different from the hinder part has a 



54 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

head, and the sense organs are generally there. All 
Molluscs follow this pattern, though it’s harder to 
find the head of an oyster than a snail.” 

“ Worms have heads, and they’re not Molluscs,” 
objected Bernard, more with a desire for further in¬ 
formation than as an objection. 

“ So do you have a head,” retorted the scientist, 
“ but you’re not a Mollusc. I didn’t say that every¬ 
thing which has a head is a Mollusc, but that every 

Mollusc has a head-” 

“ But hasn’t every animal got a head? ” the boy 
interrupted. 

“ By no means! Where’s the head of a sponge? ” 
“ A sponge! That’s not an animal! Oh, yes, it 
is, too,” Bernard corrected himself. “ I hadn’t 
thought of that.” 

“ Another characteristic of the Mollusca,” the 
zoologist continued, “ is that the stomach and in¬ 
testines are always on the back, while the belly- 
part or lower half of the body is the foot.” 

“ The squid hasn’t them on the back, surely! ” 

“ The squid has,” his informant corrected, quietly. 
“ Turn him so that his mouth is downwards, which 
brings his foot—extended into arms—into its proper 
place, and you’ll see that what you would probably 
call his tail is his back, and his intestines are in 




OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 55 

there. The octopus shows it you more easily, and 
he always swims that way.” 

“ So he does,” admitted Bernard thoughtfully. 

“ The next thing you need to remember,” Bower 
went on, “ is that the skin of the back secretes the 
shell, and that this shell grows from the middle of 
the back down towards the single foot. A shell has 
to grow, just as your skin has to grow, or perhaps 
your hair is a better example. You’ve got skin 
on your scalp, and that skin grows hair; the 
Mollusc has skin on his back, and that skin grows 
shell. 

“ Between the shell and the foot lies a groove of 
skin, and the hinder edge of this groove grows down 
into a long fold or flap, which is called the * mantle ’ 
or the ‘ mantle-skirt.’ In some Molluscs, this skin is 
only a little longer than the shell, in a great many, 
it grows upwards again and half-covers the shell; 
but, in a few cases, just as in your friend the Giant 
Squid, the mantle so entirely covers the shell that 
the latter is hidden and becomes internal. Indeed, 
the shell is sometimes eliminated entirely, as in the 
octopus. Those flat, white, oval lance-points which 
one may pick up in quantities on many beaches, are 
nothing but the internal shells of cuttlefish.” 

“ Are they? I never knew where they came from, 


56 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

before. They’re used for making tooth-powder, 
aren’t they? ” 

“ And for polishing-paste for jewels. Fine castings 
of gold are made in cuttle-bone powder. Don’t be 
led astray by the trade word ‘ cuttle-bone,’ for, ob¬ 
viously, no Mollusc has a bone. 

“ The mantle, which grows up over this internal 
shell, may not really look like skin, but it is. If 
you examine it under the microscope, you would be 
able to see that even the inside of a mantle is made 
of outside skin—ectoderm.” 

“ I know the difference in looks between ectoderm 
and endoderm,” said Bernard, nodding. “ I’ve made 
lots of skin slides for Father’s lectures.” 

“ So much to the good,” approved the zoologist; 
“ there’s nothing like microscope training for teach¬ 
ing exactness, and for giving the ability to know 
what you see. 

“ The next things to be noted are the ctenidia, or 
breathing organs, using the word breathing, of 
course, to mean water-breathing. These ctenidia 
grow out of the body in the mantle cavity, and, 
naturally, are connected with the blood-stream-” 

“ Do Molluscs have blood, Mr. Bower? ” 

“ Certainly they have blood! Some even have red 
blood, though in most the blood is colorless; a few 



OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 


57 


have it blue from corpuscles containing a solution of 
copper. This blood-stream, whether colorless, blue, 
or red, has to be oxygenated, and the Molluscs get 
their oxygen from the water. 

“ In order to have a constant supply of moving 
water, these ctenidia are provided with little cilia, 
or lashing hairs, like tiny oars, which sweep water 
over the breathing organs; that’s the way an oyster 
does. But among the Cephalopods, the octopus or 
the squid, for example, there is no need for these 
muscular hairs, because they can travel fast enough 
to keep the water moving.” 

“ The squid swims forwards as well as backwards, 
doesn’t he? ” 

“ Certainly. He doesn’t swim backwards at all, he 
merely propels himself backwards with muscular 
ejections of water from his siphon, at the same time 
usually discharging a cloud of sepia from his ink- 
bag, as a protective measure. But he can and does 
swim forwards, some forms with fair speed, the 
hideous Vampire Squid being an active swimmer.” 

“ And they catch their prey by swimming after 
it?” 

“ Some do. The smaller squids live around rocks 
and stalk prawns which are resting, some of the 
more active forms follow schools of fish, and two or 


58 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

three species have modified their tentacles to form 
a sort of fishing net. But they all keep the radula 
of the typical Mollusc, and some have developed a 
hard, chalky beak. 

“ The radula, itself, in its simplest form, is a hard¬ 
ened band roughened with teeth, which moves up 
and down (not from side to side) like a rasp. The 
tooth-like excrescences are in transverse rows, with 
a larger central tooth. The radula grows all the 
time, just as your finger-nails do, so that it has to 
be worn off by use. 

“ There, then, are your four characters of Molluscs, 
shell, foot, ctenidia, and radula; let us see how they 
work out in the different species. 

“ The Mollusca form an immense ‘ phylum ’— 
which is the name given to the principal divisions 
of the animal world; there are twenty-two ‘ phyla ’ 
in all. In the Mollusca there are five ‘ Classes/ thir¬ 
teen ‘ Orders/ some scores of ‘ Families/ some hun¬ 
dreds of ‘ Genera/ and over 28,000 different 
‘ Species/ each of which, of course, differs from every 
other. So, although this outline I’ve given you is 
common to all, there are over 28,000 different varia¬ 
tions.” 

“ How in the world can you ever tell them all 
apart, Mr. Bower? ” 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 59 

“Very easily! By the letters of the zoological 
alphabet I was telling you about. All these 28,000 
species fall into the five Molluscan Classes—five of 
the letters of this alphabet. Ill show you how they 
fit in. 

“ Take the first Class: the Chitons or Amphineura. 
They are little creatures, something like a limpet— 
as I told you—and to be found in all oceans. They 
have a series of shell-like plates, instead of a shell, 
but otherwise possess the four typical Molluscan 
characters. See: ” he drew a rough design, “ there’s 
a Chiton, your first Molluscan letter! See if you 
can copy it! ” 

Accustomed to microscopical drawing, Bernard 
copied the simple outline in a few quick pencil 
strokes, and the zoologist nodded, greatly pleased at 
the boy’s aptitude. 

“ The second letter in the Molluscan alphabet is 
the Gastropoda. For an example, let’s take the 
limpet, with his high pointed shell protecting his 
intestines on the back, his hooded mantle-skirt all 
round him, his single foot for creeping, his ctenidia 
—like gill-blades—and his well-developed radula. 
But he lacks bilateral symmetry, for the hinder in¬ 
testine twists and doubles back on itself so that the 
hinder opening comes forward again, near the mouth. 


60 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

With a twist of that kind, you see, there couldn’t be 
an evenly balanced arrangement inside. 

“ He’s a queer little beast, is the limpet, living 
mainly on rocks that are clear of water at low tide. 
When his rock is under water, he takes a walk of a 
few inches or so, but always returns to the identical 
spot where he’s taken up his homestead, and stays 
quiet when the tide is out. Plenty of his near rela¬ 
tives have spiral shells, and the twistings that their 
insides take are weird to behold; however, with the 
anatomy of Mr. Limpet as a guide, you can easily 
see that they’re all built on the same pattern, with¬ 
out having to be a scientific Sherlock Holmes. 

“ The periwinkle and the whelk, which belong to 
another group of Gastropods, show a better devel¬ 
oped head than the limpet, but the body remains 
twisted. Some members of this group have a pro¬ 
boscis, like an elephant’s trunk, carrying the radula; 
this enables them to bore holes in the shells of their 
neighbors, and then to put in the mouth-bearing 
proboscis so as to feast on the victim inside. Most 
of them, too, have a pair of head tentacles. 

“ The sea-hare is a good example of the third 
group of Gastropods and he ought to interest you, 
Bernard, for his mantle-skirt grows backwards over 
the shell, leaving only a tiny bit exposed at the top; 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 61 

this gives a good idea how, in other forms, such as 
the squid, the mantle entirely covers the shell and 
makes it internal. Although a fully-shelled crea¬ 
ture, he has eyes and four cephalic tentacles. 

“ The Pteropods also belong to this group, and 
they may give you another clue to the answer of 
your question, for they are really free-swimming 
shellfish—such as the squid and the octopus are by 
origin. These ‘ wing-feet ’ have the single foot ex¬ 
tended into two flaps, which serve as fins.” 

Bernard sketched rapidly, following the designs 
shown him by the zoologist as he was speaking. His 
disbelief was waning fast, for, on the paper under 
his pencil, he saw the steady development of the 
strange forms which he had always lumped under the 
contemptuous word: “ shellfish.” 

“ The fourth and last group of the Gastropods— 
we’re still in the second Class, remember—includes 
the slugs and land-snails, though there are marine 
forms as well. Here the ctenidia have been turned 
into a kind of lung, for air-breathing, but, otherwise, 
the land-snails resemble the predaceous sea-snail. 

“ It is among this group that Oncidium, the 
Many-Eyed, is found. This little creature answers 
the question you asked me about eyes, Bernard, for, 
in addition to the two proper eyes in front, this 


62 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

lunged gastropod has a large number of eyes scat¬ 
tered all over his back.” 

“ Real eyes? ” 

“ Oh, very much so! Unusually elaborate, in fact, 
each one having a lens, retina, optic nerve, and all 
the rest of it.” 

“ What does he want them on his back for? ” 

The zoologist shrugged his shoulders. 

“ That’s always a hard question to ask in science, 
and, seven times out of ten, there isn’t any answer. 
Why do you have five fingers instead of six? Why 
does a mouse have a tail? 

“ The third Molluscan Class is the Scaphopoda, 
all the forms being modified for burrowing. You 
don’t need to waste much time over the Tooth- 
Shells, for there isn’t any other creature resembling 
them. The Molluscan type holds, except that the 
muscular action of the mantle at the hinder end does 
the work of the ctenidia. 

“ The fourth Class or letter of the Molluscan 
alphabet is the biggest. That is the Lamellibranchia, 
and includes nearly all the bivalves or two-shelled 
shellfish. You’ve got to look a bit sharp, here, to 
follow the Molluscan anatomy. 

“ Where they differ from such a form as the 
limpet, for example, is that they are double-shelled, 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 63 

that the head parts are rudimentary, and that the 
rear part of the mantle-skirt is developed into a pair 
of tubes or siphons, one of which acts to admit water, 
the other to expel it. This is very useful to sluggish 
or fixed forms. Although none of them have real 
eyes in a real head, a few species have developed 
simple eyes on the edge of the mantle-skirt.” 

“ Has the oyster got eyes of that kind, Mr. 
Bower? ” 

“ No. He’s a degenerate type, is the oyster, and 
starts his inactive life even when very young. When 
you compare him, either in the young or the adult 
stage, with other Lamellibranches, you’ll see that the 
differences of structure are due to a change in feed¬ 
ing habits. The oyster has given up the Molluscan 
habit of hunting for his food, and has adopted the 
indolent habit of allowing himself to be nourished 
by filtering the water which comes to him, and re¬ 
taining the tiny organisms therein. 

“ So much for this Class. But, before leaving it, 
don’t forget the siphons of these Lamellibranches, 
and remember the tentacles on the heads of the 
Gastropods! ” 

“ Ah! Now I see how we’re coming to the make¬ 
up of the squid! ” affirmed Bernard. 

“ So you should, for we’ve reached the fifth Class, 


64 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

the fifth letter of the Molluscan alphabet. This is 
the Cephalopoda, and, by now, you ought to have a 
fair idea what kind of anatomy to expect from the 
Giant Squid. 

“ Chu Ting gave you a marvellous idea of what 
the outside of that monster looked like, in his de¬ 
scription of the battle with the cachalot, deep in the 
green-blue water, but he couldn’t picture for you 
what its inside was like. It takes a scientist’s eye to 
do that, my boy! ” 

Bernard took note of the ring of satisfaction in 
the zoologist’s voice. 

. “ The Cephalopods run fairly true to Molluscan 
form,” the expert continued, “ but all the characters 
have been altered. In the Nautilus, the shell is not 
only external, but greatly extended, containing 
abandoned chambers which are full of gas; the shell 
has become internal in the squid, forming the ‘ cut¬ 
tle-bone ’ I told you about, a moment ago; and it 
is rudimentary or entirely absent in the various 
species of octopus. The mantle-skirt has become a 
tough skin, and forms the characteristic ‘ octopus- 
hide/ The ctenidia are well developed as paired gill- 
plumes. 

“ The single foot has developed some very strange 
forms. It has grown up around the head, so as to 


OYSTER AND OCTOPUS 65 

surround the mouth, and in the type-form—the 
Nautilus—it isn’t easy to say which is head and 
which is foot. The head-foot is drawn out into ten¬ 
tacles, or ‘ arms,’ short in some species and extra¬ 
ordinarily long in others, generally eight or ten in 
number, and always paired. There is a siphon, very 
muscular in the squid. The hinder part of the foot 
is either quite small or absent. The toothed radula 
is very fully developed, and often has a chalky ac¬ 
cretion like a parrot’s beak. 

“ Now, Bernard, if you take a pearly nautilus out 
of his shell, and compare him with the ordinary 
small squid, you’ll see the likeness at once. If you 
compare either of them with a typical Lamellibranch 
—such as the oyster’s half-brother Mactra —there 
are shell, mantle-skirt, and siphon; if you compare 
either of them with a gastropod, such as a snail, there 
are the head tentacles, the single foot, and the 
radula; if you compare either of them with the 
humble little chiton, at the bottom of the scale, all 
the five anatomical characters are there. 

“ That way, my boy, with the clues I’ve given you, 
if you go to work and examine the Giant Squid, 
you’ll have no great difficulty in geeing for yourself 
how that voracious Devil of the Deep resembles a 
limpet, a periwinkle, a slug, a snail, a clam, an 


66 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


oyster, or a nautilus, and how all these various types 
of Mollusca hang together. 

“ To remember them easily, think of these five 
letters as a Chiton, a Snail, a Tooth-Shell, a Mussel, 
and a Squid, and, to the end of your days, you’ll al¬ 
ways be able to tell a Mollusc; the 28,000 species in 
this division of the animal Kingdom will become to 
you as easy to recognize as that a swallow is a bird 
or that a mackerel is a fish.” 

Bernard drew a great breath and looked up from 
the sheet of paper which he had covered with rough 
sketches and designs. 

“ Before I get to sleep to-night,” he declared, “ I’ll 
know the look of all those Molluscs as well as if I’d 
gone to school with them! ” 

“ What! All the twenty-eight thousand? ” 

“ Well, maybe, not all. But it’ll take more than 
an oyster or an octopus to fool me next time! ” 



Courtesy of Am. Mus. of Xat. Hist., X. Y. C. 

A Microscopic One-Celled Animal in All Its Beauty. 

Model of the Radiolaria, Anloceros FAegans, one of those which form 

the deep-sea ooze. 







The Eucoronis Challengeri. The Stauracantha Murray ana. 

The Living Microscopic Animals known as Radiolaria, whose Shells cover Thousands of Square Miles 

of the Ocean Floor, drawn to a magnification of 2000 times. 


























CHAPTER III 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 

Bernard made good his boast, if not indeed that 
very evening, not long after. The strange and un¬ 
expected likenesses which he had commenced to 
find in the most unlike shellfish fascinated him; the 
drawings which came from his own hand seemed al¬ 
most as wonderful to him as if he had made the 
creatures themselves. He began to feel that fever 
of accomplishment which comes not only from learn¬ 
ing new things but from making them, such a fever 
as many boys know well in the construction of elec¬ 
trical or mechanical models. 

Chu Ting had not spoken since the famous even¬ 
ing when he had described the battle between the 
cachalot and the Giant Squid, although, several 
times, Bernard had tried to tempt him into talk. 

Late one afternoon, when the light was fading and 

Bernard had taken his sketch-block of the Molluscan 

alphabet on deck to take advantage of the last rays, 

the Chinese artist came up from below. Seeing the 

boy engaged in drawing, he came up quietly and 

took the sketch-block from his hand, fingering the 

67 


68 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

pages swiftly and appraising the designs with a mas- 
ter’s eye. 

Then, from his pocket, he took the tiny oblong 
loose-leaf book of Chinese paper-colors which he al¬ 
ways carried, and, with a few swift strokes of a brush 
of frayed wood—little larger than a match—he 
splashed in the hues. The pencilled creature—it was 
a sea-butterfly—leaped from the paper as if it were 
alive. 

Even though knowing Chu Ting’s marvellous pow¬ 
ers, Bernard gasped at the swiftness and precision 
shown. 

“ That’s magic! ” he exclaimed. 

Only the faintest smile gleamed on the China¬ 
man’s face. Closing the book of colors, he took up 
the lad’s pencil, and, on the outside of the little 
booklet, wrote the boy’s name, turning away with¬ 
out a word. Bernard pursued him along the deck, 
profusely thanking him, but before disappearing 
down the companionway, Chu Ting turned his head 
and said, quietly: 

“ Sunday! ” 

This enigmatic response puzzled Bernard, and, 
knowing that his chief understood Chu Ting better 
than any one else on board, he decided to ask the 
professor in the morning. Accordingly, when he 



CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 69 

laid out the microscopic slides which he had pre¬ 
pared the day before, the boy related the incident. 

“Eh! Did he do that?” exclaimed the ocean¬ 
ographer, in evident surprise. “ H’m, it’s a good deal 
for Chu Ting to do, though I showed him some of 
your drawings from the microscope the other day. 
There’s no doubt as to what he means, to my notion. 
He expects you to make as many colored drawings 
as you can, by Sunday, following the general han¬ 
dling of the one he’s done for you. You’re clever 
with your pencil, as it is, and if you could learn to 
use color, the gift might come in most usefully. 
That is,” he added, with stern emphasis, “ if you do 
it with exactitude.” 

For a few moments there was silence, while the 
professor manipulated the extremely delicate screws 
of his high-power microscope, for he was examining 
the internal organs of some very minute forms. 
Bernard waited, pencil poised, to take down the dic¬ 
tation of the description. 

“ As a matter of fact,” the scientist went on, some 
time later, when he had finished his dictation and 
was removing the slide, “ our ignorance of the causes 
of coloration in marine forms of life is one of the 
great puzzles which comes up for study on an expe¬ 
dition such as this. It’s excessively difficult to work 


70 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

out a proper theory from a few minutes' examination 
of a half-dead specimen brought up in the nets, or 
else preserved in alcohol, which fades the colors. 
Faithful sketches in color, made from life, are of the 
first importance.” 

“ But I thought that question was all settled long 
ago, Professor McDree! I’m sure Father told me 
once that it was all a matter of protective coloration. 
I thought the colors of fishes were specially arranged 
to keep them from being easily seen by the bigger 
fishes who want to eat them. Isn’t that why the top 
of a fish is dark, and the underneath is light? ” 

“ That theory explains some types of coloring, but 
not all,” was the reply. “ It wouldn’t be a puzzle, 
if that were all there is to it; but biology is rarely 
as simple as that, my boy. How does such a theory 
explain the rich coloring of a jelly-fish, for example, 
or the glowing hues of a sea-anemone, or the vivid 
yellow-and-black splotches of a Killer Whale? 

“ The real difficulty is that the protective colora¬ 
tion theory doesn’t explain everything, but leaves 
just enough knotty points to prevent its full accepta¬ 
tion. One of the reasons why the Kittiwake is head¬ 
ing for the Sargasso Sea, is that we can make a spe¬ 
cial study of coloration, especially in the deeper 
regions of the sea, where all the hues are sombre. 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 71 

“ That’s why we sent to China to get Chu Ting, 
and our Government had to get special permission 
from the Chinese Government to let him go. The 
Chinese, you know, attach enormous importance to 
visual or graphic description, and, while they don’t 
do a great deal of scientific work, anything they do 
undertake is carried out with a detail and an exacti¬ 
tude far greater than ours. We’ve got some good 
American artists, no doubt, but they can’t be de¬ 
pended on; they’re too anxious to make pretty pic¬ 
tures. I chaffed Chu Ting, the other day, by saying 
that I believed he counted the number of scales on a 
fish before drawing it, and he admitted that he did! 

“ Now, you can see for yourself, Bernard, that a 
man who’s as exact in that, and who’s as well trained 
in his art as Chu Ting, isn’t likely to make any mis- 
judgment in coloring; that’s of incalculable value 
when it comes to scientific investigation.” 

“I wish I could do even half as well! ” put in 
Bernard. 

“Eh! You’re not asking much! Why, my boy, 
Chu Ting is the only one of his kind! Don’t run 
away with illusions. It’s probably out of the ques¬ 
tion for you to become an artist of his calibre, though 
there’s no denying that you’ve got a natural talent 
for scientific drawing.” 


72 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ I began young enough,” declared Bernard. “ So 
far back as I can remember, I used to amuse myself 
copying Father’s drawings. Mother used to teach 
me, too. I’ve got just piles of books, at home, all 
filled with pencil sketches from the microscope. But 
I never learned anything about painting.” 

“ Well, if you don’t learn now, you never will,” 
his chief rejoined. “ Chu Ting seems to have taken 
a fancy to you—though he’d never admit it—and a 
few hints from him on this voyage would be worth 
a couple of years in an art school, where they’d teach 
you a whole lot of things you don’t need to know. 

“ And I don’t mind telling you, Bernard,” he went 
on, gravely, “ that if you should work up along some 
such line as that, it might turn out to be your fu¬ 
ture. Your father’s idea that you should devote 
your life to oceanography is all very well, but, as I 
told him myself, it’s a career that takes money. 
Aside from the great Institute at Liverpool, the spe¬ 
cial schools in Norway, and some classes at Monaco 
and Naples, there isn’t much opportunity for a train¬ 
ing which would lead to any definite paying posi¬ 
tion except in the fisheries, and that field is already 
overcrowded. 

“ An oceanographical cruise for the sake of pure 
science is such a confoundedly expensive thing—• 



Courtesy of Inst it ut Oceanographique, Monaco. 


The Prince on the Bridge of His Yacht. 

The Prince of Monaco, sovereign and oceanographer, through whose 
devotion to science all the winnings from the gambling tables 
of Monte Carlo were used to benefit humanity. 



The Monaco Museum of Oceanography. 














CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 73 


often undertaken by two or three governments com¬ 
bined—that only the most eminent men, selected 
from various countries, are likely to get appoint¬ 
ments. For some time, at least, oceanography is 
bound to remain in the hands of the people with in¬ 
dependent incomes—like the late Prince of Monaco, 
for example, who devoted all the earnings from the 
gambling tables of Monte Carlo to the earnest study 
of oceanography—or to those who, by reason of their 
high standing as chemists, or biologists, or as author¬ 
ities in some other related science, have been chosen 
by their respective governments. 

“ But a trained scientific artist—such as Chu Ting, 
for example—can command his own price. He will 
be in demand for any oceanographical expedition, 
no matter what Government is undertaking it; and, 
after the results of such an expedition have been 
published—the Challenger Expedition volumes took 
twenty years to produce—he will be equally sought 
by the great museums. 

“ You must remember, Bernard, that expensive as 

is the voyage itself, the study and the publication of 

• 

the results costs just about as much. In the great 
expedition which was proposed in 1920—but which 
the British Government did not feel itself rich 
enough to undertake—the cost was placed at three 


74 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

million dollars for the voyage and three million dol¬ 
lars for five years of subsequent detailed study and 
the extensive and richly illustrated publications 
necessary. And, you know, Bernard, it’s difficult to 
get six million dollars from any government for pure 
science! ” 

The next microscopic slide being duly adjusted 
under the lens, Professor McDree broke off talking, 
and commenced his investigation. It was not until 
shortly before lunch that he returned to the ques¬ 
tion to which he had referred earlier in the morning. 

“ Yes,” he resumed thoughtfully, “ it’s queer about 
the colors of fish. It looks like a subject which ought 
to explain itself, and still it doesn’t. Of course, there 
are some general observations. 

“ First of all, as you probably know, in all nets 
towed at or near the surface one will always find 
any number of colorless young fish, while the trans¬ 
parent leptocephali occur in considerable quanti¬ 
ties.” 

“ But I thought leptocephali were young fish, Pro¬ 
fessor! ” 

“ Young eels, my boy, though there are early 
stages of eel-like fish among them. The discovery 
of young eels—which, for more than a century, were 
never recognized as such—thousands of miles away 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 75 


from the habitual abode of grown-up eels reveals one 
of the most curious life-histories of the deep-sea 
waters, and you ought to ask Nifstrod to tell you 
the details. But, for the moment, all you need to 
remember is that leptocephali or eel-young are trans¬ 
parent, even their blood being colorless. When sort¬ 
ing them out of living material, one can only see 
their small black eyes; the outlines of the bodies 
being indistinguishable. 

“ Other fishes of the extreme surface are often 
quite a striking blue, especially those of tropical 
waters. Perhaps one of the most characteristic is 
the flying-fish, which, naturally, never goes into 
deep water. In all, I could name you at least a 
dozen blue fish, ranking from sky-blue to sea-blue, 
and not a single one of these is ever found as much 
as seventy-five fathom (450 feet) down, which is 
regarded as the lower limit of the purely surface 
dwellers. 

“ The region between seventy-five fathom and two 
hundred and fifty fathom is a general layer for thou¬ 
sands of species, and, in this region of blue-silver 
twilight, gray, mirror-like, and silvery colors are com¬ 
mon hues for fish. Many of the characteristic forms 
of this depth are blue on the back, silvery on the 
sides, and whitish below; protective coloration is evi- 


76 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

dently acting in these cases, for the water viewed 
from above is slaty-blue, viewed sideways it is sil¬ 
very, while the sky, seen through the water from 
below, is white. 

“ Adaptation to surroundings, too, can hardly be 
denied. As you'll see, when we come to the Sar¬ 
gasso Sea, the disguisement of the creatures living 
in the Gulf-weed is simply astounding. Coast fish 
of rocky regions, too, often of brownish or reddish 
hues, resemble brown and red algae, while the gaudy 
painting of coral-reef fishes, surrounded as they are 
by bright-hued anemones and gay sea-fans, certainly 
suggests adaptation." 

“ But that idea of adaptation wouldn’t explain 
the parrot-fish or the butterfly-fish, would it? ” sug¬ 
gested Bernard. “ Certainly there’s no weed or rock 
that they could resemble! ” 

“ And it wouldn’t explain the groupers of Ber¬ 
muda, either, my boy; they can change their color 
at will, from a light gray to a deep black, according 
as they are hungry or no. Certainly, if the gray is 
protective, the black can’t be, and vice versa. As 
I said to you, protective coloration doesn’t explain 
everything, though, in a general way, it has a good 
deal of value. 

“ Now, let us take the next layer down, from the 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 77 

250-fathom to the 500-fathom line. This is the low¬ 
est layer of sunlight; only very special photographic 
plates will register any light rays after an hour’s ex¬ 
posure at this thousand-metre depth. Here, in gen¬ 
eral, the fish are of duller colors, a darkish blue-gray 
being the favored hue. Towards the lower line, black 
fishes and red prawns begin to be found.” 

“ Red! Why red? I should think they’d be easy 
to see! ” 

“ No. On the contrary. Below 250 fathoms, no 
red rays of sunlight penetrate. You remember Chu 
Ting’s description of the peacock-blue light? In 
that illumination, any red form would appear black. 
What seems to prove this is that in northern waters, 
or coastal waters, that is, either where the light is 
fainter or the water more turbid—so that the red 
rays of sunlight cannot penetrate so far—these red 
prawns swim higher up. 

“ This gradual deepening of hue is seen in plenty 
of other sea forms. Take the brown medusa, of 
which there are four varieties, each darker than the 
other. The lightest-colored is found at 150 fathoms, 
the next species at 250 fathoms, the third at the 
500-fathom line, while the deepest-colored of all are 
found below, in the region of eternal dark. 

“ The smaller squids reveal the same condition. 


78 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

The most transparent of all, having only a slightly 
pinkish tint, have been caught mainly on the sur¬ 
face; the transparent reddish kind, lower down; the 
reddish with luminous patches, lower still; the coral 
and blue, below 250 fathoms; the dark red, in the 
region of the red prawns; the vivid orange, just be¬ 
low the line of sunlight penetration; while the bril¬ 
liant scarlet and orange have been brought up from 
deeper still, where, certainly, no light can penetrate.” 

“ But if no light gets down there, why should any 
creature take the trouble to make itself scarlet and 
orange? ” 

“ That, my boy,” said the Professor, smiling, “ is 
only one of the scores of puzzling questions that can 
be asked. That most fantastic of fish, the Chimsera, 
colored brown, blue, and light violet, with bright 
yellow eyes, lives below the line of sunlight. Why 
does he deck himself out so gaudily, when the vast 
proportion of deep-sea fishes, the dwellers of the 
lowest pelagic or swimming layer, are content with 
black, deep brown, or a sombre purple? 

“ There seems to be a general vertical migration 
at night, and, in the dark, our nets at shallow levels 
catch fish for which we should have to trawl very 
deep, in the daytime. Even your friend the Giant 
Squid, who is happy only in the faintest light, will 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 79 


venture near the surface on a moonless night, in 
spite of the danger he runs of coming within hearing 
of a hungry whale. It’s because of this vertical 
migration that fishermen like to put out their nets 
in the night-time, for, since nets must necessarily be 
superficial, during the dark hours there are more 
fish near the surface which may be caught. 

“ But we are still a long way from understanding 
all the mechanism of the response of fish to light, 
and the question of color which is therein involved, 
and so every additional observation is of value. 
Since we shall arrive on the borders of the Sargasso 
Sea in a few days, I’ll relieve you temporarily from 
the preparation of slides; young Lee can take my 
dictation. Go ahead with your color-drawings. 
Compare your results with the work of Chu Ting, 
and that’ll teach you to see where your observation 
has been defective. 

“ When we get to the Sargasso Sea, take every 
chance to be out in the small boat whenever you can, 
if the sea be calm, and make as many drawings as 
time will permit. Learn to observe at a glance, and 
to work fast. I’ve seen Chu Ting do five first-class 
color-drawings in an hour! 

“ Then, too, there’s always the possibility that 
good fortune may put right before your eyes some 


80 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

form that no one else has ever seen before. I 
haven’t a doubt that there are thousands, yes, hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of new species yet to be found 
in the sea. What a triumph for you, if you could 
find one on your first cruise! ” 

The Professor smiled encouragingly. 

“ If you do, Bernard, I’ll promise to call it by 
your name: ‘ Something Bernardi 7 ” 

“It sounds great!” declared Bernard, his eyes 
flashing. “ I’ll find a new one, Professor McDree, 
sure! ” 

“ Even if you have to dive down below the 500- 
fathom line after it, eh, as you wanted to do for the 
Giant Squid? ” chuckled his chief, rising from his 
chair as “eight bells” sounded, and carefully put¬ 
ting his microscope away. 

It can be imagined with what intense ardor 
Bernard set himself to his drawing and to his first 
use of the Chinese paper-colors, the smallest scrap of 
which, put into a saucer containing prepared albu¬ 
men and water, made a most intense but always 
transparent color. The boy congratulated himself 
that no one had ever shown him any method of 
painting, for the Chinese technique which he picked 
up from Chu Ting was absolutely different from 
anything he would have learned otherwhere. 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 81 


Especially, the gradations of tints and hues which 
Chu Ting could distinguish were far beyond Ber¬ 
nard’s perception. Where, between a blue and a 
violet, the lad could discern but four or five shades, 
the Chinaman could see twenty, and Chu Ting con¬ 
sidered a thousand tones of color as the very smallest 
number which a beginner ought to know. 

There were times when Bernard’s impatience and 
the American feeling of doing a thing “ somewhere 
about right ” almost overcame him, and twice this 
sloppiness of habit nearly cost him Chu Ting’s help 
and advice. But the Chinese artist was so consum¬ 
mate a master, and Professor McDree so thoroughly 
drummed into the boy’s head the value of exacti¬ 
tude, that Bernard forced himself to bend beneath 
the iron yoke of precision, exasperating as he found 
it. 

Little by little he learned the use of the match¬ 
like pieces of frayed wood which the Chinaman used 
for a brush, which were never used for two different 
colors and were always thrown away at the end of 
a day’s work. Every day, too, he found his eye 
growing more and more sensitive and responsive to 
fine distinctions of color, though far behind the 
standard demanded by Chu Ting. 

And, every day, the Kittiwake steamed nearer to 


i 


82 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

the Sargasso Sea, which was to prove, for Bernard, 
the test of his new powers. 

“ I’ve read some queer things about that sea, Mr. 
Bower,” he said one evening to his friend the zo¬ 
ologist. “ Do you suppose it’s really as bad as the 
old legends used to tell? Is it a fact that ships get 
stuck in there and can’t ever get out because of the 
masses of seaweed? ” 

The scientist shrugged his shoulders. 

“ There certainly must be some truth as well as a 
good deal of exaggeration in those old-time stories,” 
he replied. “ Certainly, there are any number of 
cases recorded in the logs of sailing ships where they 
have been delayed there; for all we know to the 
contrary, some of the thousands of ships listed at 
Lloyd’s as ‘ missing ’ may have found their ocean 
graves in those parts. Columbus was held in the 
Sargasso Sea for two weeks. The British frigate 
Agamemnon found herself caught there with weeds, 
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and her 
captain has left quite a thrilling record of the diffi¬ 
culty the man-o’-war’s-men found in cutting a path 
through the weed from small boats and towing the 
frigate to clear water where she could make sail. 

“ It’s true that, in 1910, an oceanographical ex¬ 
pedition on the Michael Sars approached the region, 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 83 


and found the surface to be only partly covered by 
patches of weed, but the Michael Sars was running 
short of coal and merely touched the fringe of the 
northeast corner. So that’s not much to go by. 

“ Now, fourteen years later, we’ve no idea what 
we’re going to find. Personally I think we may run 
into a good deal of weed, for, last year, a Norwegian 
sailing-ship skipper, calling at the Azores, reported 
an enormous amount of Gulf-weed floating on the 
southern edge of the Gulf Stream.” 

“ Just how big is the Sargasso Sea, then, Mr. 
Bower? ” 

“ That’s a bit hard to say, exactly. It shifts to 
and fro a little, following the seasonal changes in 
oceanic currents. In general, I suppose one might 
say that it is about 400 miles north and south, and 
700 miles east and west, about 280,000 square miles 
in all. A good deal of it is really unexplored, though 
soundings have been run, here and there.” 

“ But what is it that makes it a ‘ sea/ right in the 
middle of the ocean? ” 

“ It isn’t a true 1 sea/ in the sense of having a bed 
of its own. It’s an integral part of the North At¬ 
lantic Ocean, but it’s called a sea because it has 
some very definite peculiarities. Its existence is due 
to surrounding ocean currents, which leave it a some- 


84 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

what calm and isolated stretch of water. The vast 
patches of weed keep the heavy waves down a good 
deal, and storm tracks, as a rule, curve round it. 

“ The Gulf-weed which covers its surface comes 
mainly up the Gulf Stream, running from the Gulf 
of Mexico past the Keys of Florida, and some of it 
is carried by the Gulf Drift, which takes the same 
general direction but comes from the Equatorial 
Current, curving northward and eastward outside of 
the West Indies. There’s never any difficulty in 
knowing when you’re in the Sargasso Sea, my boy; 
the amount of Gulf-weed is a certain sign. I 
shouldn’t be surprised if we were on the very edge 
now. I noticed several stray tufts of Gulf-weed in 
the water to-day.” 

So eager was Bernard to get his first sight of the 
Sargasso Sea that dawn saw him on deck next morn¬ 
ing. Early as he was, Chu Ting was there before 
him. No one on watch had ever witnessed a sun¬ 
rise or a sunset without having perceived the im¬ 
passive Chinaman intently absorbed in the spectacle. 

Once, one of the navigating officers of the Kitti- 
wake had chaffingly accused the artist of worship¬ 
ping the sunset; to this flippancy, Chu Ting had re¬ 
plied, without turning his head: 

“ To do so, at least, would show more wisdom 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 85 


than that possessed by the ignorant man who sneers 
at beauty and is blind to wonder! ” 

The naval officer, duly and most unexpectedly 
snubbed, quickly went away. 

The sun rose lemon-yellow in a sky generally clear 
save for a few puff-balls of cloud, and with some 
stray wisps of mares’-tails trailed by haze, suggestive 
of fine weather to be followed by wind. The, morn¬ 
ing itself was calm, and the water was without a 
ripple. 

The sea itself had a curious patched look, like the 
splotches of some illimitable jaguar-skin, in blocks 
of golden-brown and intense blue. A moment or 
two passed before Bernard realized that these 
splotches of golden-brown were great patches or ex¬ 
panses of the famous Gulf-weed, so unlike any other 
seaweed that grows, its branches and little berries 
looking almost like golden holly. 

“ This is really the Sargasso Sea, then? ” ex¬ 
claimed the boy, in high excitement. 

Chu Ting nodded, but did not turn away from the 
sunrise sky. 

Then, almost under the ship herself, a large 
shadow passed slowly. Bernard peered over the side. 

“ Oh! Look! A sea-turtle! ” 

Chu Ting pointed, first to one spot, and then an- 


86 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

other. Two more of the great turtles were floating 
motionless on the surface. 

“ Are those the big leatherbacks? ” queried Ber¬ 
nard, eagerly. “ I’ve never seen one before! ” 

The Chinaman shook his head. 

“ Green turtles, then? The eating ones! Yum, 
yum! We ought to have turtle soup enough for a 
week or two! ” 

But Chu Ting shook his head again. 

“ Not green turtle? The hawk’s-bill, that tor¬ 
toise-shell comes from? No? Not that one, either? 
The loggerhead, then? ” 

This time the Chinese artist nodded. 

“ Well, I don’t know if that’s worth eating. 
Maybe. Hullo! Isn’t that the boat going out? 
Wonder if they’ll take me? ” 

He raced along the deck, and, seeing Nifstrod 
making ready to join, begged to be of the party. 

The sport proved to be less exciting than he ex¬ 
pected. The turtles lay sleeping, and the boat was 
given way enough so that she would glide up noise¬ 
lessly on the glassy surface, the steersman turning 
her so that she slipped just behind the animal. As 
the boat passed, two sailors grabbed hold of a hind 
leg apiece, and heaved the turtle on board. Four 
were taken thus, before breakfast. 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 87 


Little bright-colored wreckfish, blue with black 
bars, swam close to the turtles’ shells, and right un¬ 
der the shadow of one of the great chelonians—with 
a carapace nearly four feet long—were seen quan¬ 
tities of little bright blue isopods, tiny semi-parasitic 
crustaceans. In addition to this, the waters on 
every side were iridescent with swarms of shining 
chains of Salpa, some of these as much as ten feet 
long. 

“ You ought to study those Salpse carefully,” Nif- 
strod told him, pointing out both the solitary and 
chain-like forms. “ Although they look like a rib¬ 
bon of jelly, they really belong to the Vertebrates— 
though you’d never guess it. 

“ In their larval form, though, some of the Tuni- 
cata—as this Class is called—resemble tadpoles and 
have a notochord, which is the precursor of the back¬ 
bone. But they degenerate and lose almost every 
sign of advanced form when they grow older and fix 
themselves to the sea-bottom. Those Salpae you see 
there are permanently free-swimming forms. I hear 
Bower has been giving you some ideas about the 
Mollusca. Come to me, some of these days, and I’ll 
tell you some things even more surprising about the 
lower vertebrates.” 

Bernard thanked the Norwegian, but in an absent- 


88 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


minded manner, for his interest was concentrated on 
observing the coloration of the little creatures that 
spend their entire lives in the clusters of Gulf-weed. 

Following Nifstrod’s suggestion, the boy had 
taken a small-meshed net into the boat, as well as 
a flat, glass-covered dish. With his very first scoop 
amid the Gulf-weed, he had secured a dozen ex¬ 
quisitely colored tiny fish and crabs, each one more 
gaily-hued than the other. So much did they look 
like the weed itself, that the boy could hardly be¬ 
lieve his eyes. 

To test this protective coloration, he dropped a 
piece of the weed in the flat glass-covered dish. In¬ 
stantly the tiny fish rushed to it, and simply van¬ 
ished. Though Bernard’s nose was almost touching 
the glass cover of the dish—which was not more 
than two inches deep—he could not discern the 
slightest sign of the fish. Even when he opened the 
jar and pulled out the weed, the fish did not want 
to leave it, but clamped themselves to the branches 
by their front ventral fins, which had developed into 
a clinging organ that looked almost like a wrist and 
a hand. 

Although he had not yet breakfasted, Bernard 
was almost peevish when the word was given to 
return on board. The scientists were extremely anx- 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 89 

ious to examine the contents of the stomachs of the 
turtles, and, despite the Professor’s promise of free¬ 
dom, Bernard was required to stay on board and to 
make some special frozen-section slides of a new 
species of solitary Salpa, two specimens of which 
had been found in the stomach of one of the logger- 
head turtles. 

As the sea remained glassy smooth, however, late 
in the afternoon the Professor allowed the boy to 
go out in the boat to continue his sketching, prom¬ 
ising him more free time the next day. Bernard 
went out in the smallest boat, with only one sailor 
at the oars, for the other boat was out on marine 
botanical work, under Lee. 

They rowed slowly from clump to clump of the 
weed, the boy constantly using his scoop-net and 
finding scores of specimens of entirely different life- 
forms, each one characteristic of the Gulf-weed and 
colored in a different way. Some of the more re¬ 
sistant forms, such as small crabs, he put in bottles, 
but others, of a frail character, he sketched and 
colored as fast as he found them. 

Once, indeed, he noticed that the Kittiwake 
seemed quite a distance away, for she had moved 
astern a little, to make a deep sounding. For a mo¬ 
ment, prudence counselled him to go back, but there 


90 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


was still a long evening before him, and Bernard 
realized that, if windy weather should come, he 
might never again have a chance to make a dis¬ 
covery really on his own. To him, of course, nearly 
all the queer fish, crustaceans, larval forms, and 
medusae were startlingly new, but he was not so fool¬ 
ish as to suppose that they were species unknown to 
science because he was ignorant of them. 

Presently, the sailor began to eye the distance to 
the ship with a hint of uneasiness in his manner. 

“ I’m afraid there’s a capful o’ wind cornin’, young 
sir,” he said, after a while. 

“ Oh! I can’t stop now! ” declared Bernard, who 
thought his companion had other reasons for desir¬ 
ing to return. “ Look here, Brown, you’re not in such 
a hurry for supper, are you? Isn’t five dollars better 
than supper? ” 

The sailor grinned and pocketed the bill. 

“ You’ll be sure to tell ’em on board, sir, ’twas 
you as told me to stay? ” 

“ Of course! Professor McDree won’t mind; he 
told me to get as much drawing done as I could.” 

Even the most intense eagerness, however, cannot 
postpone the dusk. Gradually it began to get too 
dark to see colors, and, regretfully, Bernard put his 
sketch-block away. 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 91 


“ We’ll have to go back, now, I suppose,” he said 
with a sigh. “ Give me an oar, Brown, and I’ll take 
a hand. The Kittiwake must be nearly a mile 
away.” 

“ More’n two! ” declared the sailor, and started to 
pull. 

They rowed steadily, and rapidly lessened the dis¬ 
tance to the ship. Then, quite unexpectedly, the 
boat’s bow plunged into a bank of thick weed. 
Bernard and the sailor put their backs into the pull¬ 
ing, absolutely without result. 

“We’d better back out, sir,” came the warning; 
“ it won’t do for us to get stuck so’s we can’t move.” 

“ But where the deuce did all this weed come 
from? ” demanded Bernard. “ It wasn’t between us 
and the ship, before.” 

“ We’ve been rowin’ a bit to the south’ard. It’ll 
be all right, sir. Just a bit ’round to starboard’ll 
bring us clear.” 

Brown was right, and open water soon gleamed 
between them and the Kittiwake, still sharply out¬ 
lined in the clear evening light. Then the sailor, 
pointing with his finger, remarked casually: 

“ There’s a big one, sir! ” 

“ What? Where? Oh, a turtle! We’ve had lots 
of those to-day.” 


92 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Then, a second later, in quite a different tone, the 
boy added: 

“Hold on, though, Brown! That isn’t a logger- 
head turtle, that’s a hawk’s-bill, and I believe they’re 
rare in these seas. I’m sure they eat different things 
than the loggerheads do; who knows what we 
mightn’t find in his tummy? The Professor would 
be wild if we missed such a chance. Brown, we must 
have him! ” 

They changed their course, but, incautiously, 
Bernard made a little splash with his oar. 

The hawk’s-bill turtle, taking fright, began to 
swim, but kept only a few inches below the surface, 
where his pursuers could keep him in view in spite 
of the growing dark. 

“ He’s a-goin’ t’other way from the ship, sir,” the 
sailor warned. 

“ Can’t bother about that now; we’ve got to get 
him, Brown. He might have some entirely new 
species in his stomach! ” 

The sailor shrugged his shoulders. Ever since 
the U. S. S. Kittiwake had been loaned by the 
United States Navy for this oceanographical cruise, 
the sailor, like all the rest of the crew, had heard of 
nothing but “ new species.” He was convinced that 
all the scientists were mad, Bernard among them. 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 93 


Still, remembering the five dollars, and hopeful of a 
further tip, he rowed on. 

Three times the turtle led them this dance, but, 
the third time, it came quite up to the surface of the 
water and stopped, as though tired. 

“Now’s our chance,” whispered Bernard; “come 
on! ” 

Softly, very softly, the boat crept closer, and the 
boy turned her into position, at the same time ship¬ 
ping his oar. The skiff rounded up into position, 
slipping exactly behind the turtle. 

“ Ready, sir? ” 

Bernard nodded. 

“ Grab! ” 

Both reached out at the same moment, and the 
little boat almost overturned. A trifle put off his 
balance by the rocking of the boat, Bernard’s grip 
slipped. 

But Brown held hard to the hind-leg he had seized, 
and the turtle, not being asleep, started off with 
a mighty flipper stroke which pulled the sailor 
overboard, the gunwale of the boat being almost 
level with the water. One of the oars went by the 
side at the same time. 

Bernard, frantic at the upset, but still more frantic 
at the thought of losing the turtle, which was floun- 


94 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

dering at the surface with the sailor hanging on to 
its hind-leg, threw a loop of the painter, or boat- 
rope, over the chelonian’s head. 

Something caught! 

Whether it was that the turtle nipped the rope in 
its mouth, or whether the rope had caught in a pro¬ 
jection of the carapace, the boy never knew. All 
that he realized was that the boat began to shoot 
through the water at a terrific pace. 

At the same instant, the turtle dived slightly, and 
the sailor had to let go. He came up to the sur¬ 
face, blowing and out of breath, as the boat shot 
past. 

“ Help! ” he gurgled. 

There was not a second to lose. 

If Bernard did not save him, the navy man stood a 
strong chance of being drowned, for dusk was fall¬ 
ing. It would be difficult to swim to the ship, and 
impossible if the swimmer should find himself en¬ 
tangled in weed. 

Snatching up the remaining oar, Bernard thrust it 
out, and yelled: 

“ Grab hold, Brown! ” 

The sailor threw out a hand, and, more by good 
luck than skill, caught the handle. 

The jerk nearly pulled Bernard out of the boat, 


CAPTURED BY A TURTLE 95 


too, but he had been expecting it, and had braced 
himself for the shock. He set his teeth and hung 
on. It was all he could do, for the turtle was work¬ 
ing its flippers furiously, and the boat was simply 
tearing through the water. 

After a moment’s respite, Brown came up the oar- 
handle, hand over hand, reached the stern of the 
boat and climbed in. 

For a moment he sat panting, for his strength 
was nearly spent. Then he looked at the boy with a 
broad grin. 

“You wanted to get that turtle, young sir/’ he 
said. “ It looks to me, right now, as how that turtle 
has got us! ” 


CHAPTER IV 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO SEA 

“Whee! This is some free ride! ” declared 
Bernard exultantly, a few moments later, as the lit¬ 
tle boat tore through the water under the vigorous 
strokes of the turtle. 

“You said it, sir! An’ with a runaway hoss at 
that! ” 

The unexpected seriousness of the tone caught the 
boy’s attention. 

“ Why, you’re not scared, Brown? ” 

The sailor wriggled a little uneasily at the word, 
but he replied, sturdily: 

“ Well, I’d feel safer in my bunk, sir, an’ that’s 
a fact.” 

“ Go and cut the rope, then, if you haven’t the 
nerve to stay with it! ” exclaimed Bernard, with 
fine scorn. “ But I didn’t think a navy man would 
have wanted to quit so soon! ” 

This slur slid off Brown like water from a sea¬ 
gull’s back. 

“ As for cuttin’ the rope,” he answered, “ I 

wouldn’t ha’ waited to ask leave. If it could ha’ 

96 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 97 

been done, I’d ha’ cut it right away, an’ you can lay 
to that! But it can’t be cut.” 

“ Why not? ” 

“ Like on all Navy boats, the first fathom an’ a 
half o’ the painter is chain, to keep from chafin’ 
when made fast to a pier. There’s no way o’ gettin’ 
that loose, without a file.” 

“ Then sit back and enjoy yourself. You don’t 
get a ride like this every day.” 

“ An’ I don’t want to! ” 

The answer was abrupt, almost offensive. 

Bernard forbore to reply. 

After a moment or two of muttering to himself, 
Brown burst out: 

“ You’re young, you are; it’s easy to see you ain’t 
had much to do wi’ the sea.” 

“ What’s that got to do with it? ” 

The sailor reached into his hip-pocket and took 
out a plug of tobacco, cutting himself off a substan¬ 
tial quid. 

“ It’s got a lot to do with it. The sea ain’t no 
plaything to fool with, when you ain’t got a good 
ship under your feet. I’ve been shipwrecked, young 
sir, an’ I know.” 

“ Shipwrecked? ” 

“ Ay.” 


98 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


He paused. 

“ In an open boat.” 

Again a pause. 

“ Like this one! ” 

An icy finger seemed to pass down Bernard’s spine, 
chilling his jubilation with a shock. Certainly the 
words “ shipwreck ” and “ open boat ” had an ugly 
sound. 

“You mean-” 

“ Yes, that’s jest what I do mean.” 

“ But look here,” pursued Bernard, trying to shake 
off the feeling of depression which Brown’s sudden 
gravity had caused him, “ that turtle ahead there is 
sure to let up in a few minutes.” 

“ Let’s hope so. But we’re gettin’ farther from 
the ship every minute.” 

“ Well, he’s got to quit, sometime! ” 

“ When he does,” the sailor responded, “ we’ll haul 
up hand over hand on the painter until we reach 
the rope, an’ my sheath-knife’ll do the rest. Leave 
it to me! ” 

“ But that way, we’ll lose the turtle. I want to 
take him to the ship! ” 

“Jump in the water an’ ’rastle him, then! I’m 
with you, if you say so. No one ever yet saw Jock 
Brown back down from a fight. But a turtle in 



LOST IN THE SARGASSO 99 

water ain’t no easy thing to tackle, an’ while I’m a 
good-enough swimmer, I ain’t no mermaid.” 

Bernard laughed nervously. 

“ You don’t look like one,” he said. 

But Brown did not echo the laughter, and this 
gravity, even more than the sailor’s former words 
of warning, convinced the boy that the situation 
was more serious than he had thought. Brown 
clearly had something on his mind. 

“ Suppose our tugboat takes a notion to dive, sir, 
what then? ” 

“ Oh, turtles don’t dive much! ” retorted Bernard. 
Then he corrected himself. “ Yes, they do, though. 
I hadn’t thought of that.” 

“ We may have to think of it. Sure, if he pulled 
the boat in, so’s she filled, it’d make a bigger drag 
an’ make it harder for him to tow. But there ain’t 
no sayin’ about sea critters. He’s a big-enough brute 
to pull the boat clear under, an’ we’d have to quit 
her.” 

“ And swim all night? ” 

“ Or drown! But there’s the oar, at least, that’ll 
keep us afloat a while. Durn ornery that you let 
t’other go! ” 

For a moment or two he sat musing, then he be¬ 
stirred himself. 


100 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ One thing sure, when the sun gets up we’ll need 
fresh water an’ we’ll need it bad! ” 

“ The sun! ” 

Bernard was staggered. This phrase brought him 
sharply up against reality. Not until that very sec¬ 
ond had he realized that a return to the ship had 
already become impossible. 

“ I hadn’t thought about drinking-water, 
Brown! ” 

“ I’ve been shipwrecked before, an’ you can bet 
it’s the first thing I did think of. No one could help 
it if he’s been through what I have.” 

“ Well, there’s no way of finding fresh water, 
here! ” 

“ Yes, there is, sir. It’s a Navy regulation to 
have three days’ rations of water an’ ship’s biscuit 
kept in every boat.” 

The skiff gave a sudden dip by the head, and 
Brown scrambled over the thwarts in a hurry. 

He wrenched open the bow locker and heaved a 
sigh of relief. 

“ The water-keg’s here, all right.” 

With a stroke of his sheath-knife he cut the lash¬ 
ings. 

“ Here are the biscuits, too! Better take ’em, sir, 
quick! ” 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 101 


“ What for? ” queried Bernard, a little dazed. 
“ Aren’t they safer in there? ” 

“ An’ if we have to jump free from the boat, sud¬ 
denly? ” 

“ That’s so,” agreed the boy, taking the box. 

Brown made his way back to the stern, better to 
balance the boat and to make it more difficult for the 
turtle to pull the bow under, and, for a few mo¬ 
ments, neither spoke. 

“ Suppose we got out now and swam, before we 
get pulled too far from the ship? ” proposed Bernard. 

“ To far already, an’ too dark. Look at the Kitti- 
wake’s lights! She’s four miles away if she’s an 
inch! ” 

“ Well, I’ve swum four miles, before this! ” 

“ Yep, in daylight an’ in clear water, maybe. But 
s’pose your feet got tangled in the weed? We ain’t 
been followin’ a straight course, if you’ve noticed, 
an’ there may be a mile o’ weed between us an’ the 
ship. No, better stick to the boat as long as she’ll 
stick to us.” 

“All right; you’re captain of this cruise, now! ” 
the boy responded, more lightly than he felt. 

His first sensation of the great joke in being towed 
by a turtle had been abruptly checked, but Bernard 
could not yet bring himself to realize that there was 


102 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

actual danger. Every second he expected the turtle 
to give up the mad race. 

“ The confounded beast doesn’t seem to want to 
stop! ” he burst out, a few minutes later. 

“ He don’t. He’s scared stiff at findin’ something 
hitched on to him, an’ he’s beatin’ it for all he’s 
worth. I’m only afraid of his divin’ sudden, that’s 
what! Give me a hand to wrench off that stern 
thwart.” 

The thwart was solidly set in, with small iron 
braces, but the two managed to pry most of it away, 
though badly splintered. 

“ That’s got a bit more buoyancy than the oar. 
Here, sir, lash the box o’ biscuit ’round your neck. 
It’s water-tight. Don’t let go o’ those loose boards. 
An’ don’t go to sleep, whatever you do. If anything 
happens, be ready to jump. If we do have to swim 
for it, keep close to me, for I’ve got the water-keg. 
A man can stand ’most anything, an’ he can last for 
days, so long as he gets a drink o’ water.” 

For a few moments there was silence. 

“ Another thing! Don’t lose your hat. You’re 
apt to think you don’t need it now, an’ then, by to¬ 
morrow noon, if we’re not found, your brain’ll be 
grillin’! Tie it on! ” 

Obediently, for he realized that the sailor knew 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 103 


what he was talking about, Bernard put a piece of 
string around his hat and fastened it under his 
chin. 

Twice, during the next hour, the turtle stopped, 
and, each time, Brown tried softly to haul in the 
painter chain, hoping to get near enough to the rope 
to cut it; each time the turtle took fright, and 
started off again. 

The pace had become a good deal slower, now, and 
it was evident that the turtle was tiring, but he 
showed no signs of giving up. 

In spite of Brown’s warning, Bernard must have 
dozed off, for he woke with a sudden start to see a 
green light shoot across the sky. 

“Rockets!” the sailor explained. “They’re 
get tin’ worried about us, on board the Kittiwake, an’ 
no wonder! If we had the big lifeboat, now, we 
could answer ’em, for there’s rockets an’ flares in 
her stern locker. It ain’t reckoned necessary to stow 
’em on a little skiff like this, which ain’t never slung 
out o’ the davits, ’ceptin’ in port.” 

After another little cat-nap, Bernard started again 
at the sound of his companion’s voice. 

“ The moon’s goin’ to get upf pretty soon,” the 
sailor said cheerfully, pointing to the east; “ we’ll 
be able to see where we’re goin’, anyway.” 


104 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ You mean we’ve been travelling for three hours, 
already? ” 

“About that. You fell asleep, though I shook 
you, good an’ hard. An’ our flipper-power tug¬ 
boat’s been goin’ right along. If you’ll notice, you 
can’t see the lights o’ the ship any more, not till she 
sends up a rocket.” 

Again the green flare shot into the heavens, mark¬ 
ing the exact position of the Kittiwake, but, as the 
sailor had said, not one of her side-lights was visible. 

“ Will she be in sight by the morning, do you 
think? ” 

“ If she isn’t, we’ll be in bad, for she won’t know 
which way to look for us. It’d never get into their 
heads how we could go chasin’ off this way. Oh! 
We’re in Dutch! We can stand it for a while, 
though, if that cussed beast at least leaves us the 
boat.” 

Slowly the moon rose, the waning edge showing 
her to be a couple of days past the full. At first 
the ovoid honey-colored orb gave but little light, 
but, as she cleared the horizon and lifted herself 
above the haze on the sea-edge, the shafts of silver 
light began to sparkle on the slightly rippled sea. 
Almost immediately there came a tilt, and the bow 
of the boat began to point more downwards. 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 105 


“ I thought as much! As soon as it gets light, that 
bloomin’ turtle’ll want to keep beneath the surface. 
He’s afeared o’ bein’ seen. Durn the brute! If he’d 
only keep still long enough to let me haul up on 
him! ” 

“ I should think he’d be played out! ” 

“Not he! Much more like to amuse himself 
doin’ a divin’ act. I’d kick my shoes off, if I were 
you.” 

Brown seemed to have judged the animal’s pur¬ 
poses accurately. Steadily the turtle swam lower 
and lower, dragging the bow of the boat ever closer 
to the water-line. 

“ Stand by with those boards o’ yours,” the sailor 
warned. “ If you’ve got any o’ that sleepiness left 
still, shake it off! I’ll be good an’ surprised if we’re 
not in the water afore ten minutes.” 

“ But why-” 

The boy had no time to finish his question, when, 
with a sudden lunge, the bow of the boat tipped 
down, under. 

“ Jump! ” 

As the boat plunged and filled, both Brown and 
the boy leaped to one side, the first gripping tightly 
the boarding of the stern thwart, the other holding 
the oar. The water was warm and almost calm, and 



106 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Bernard’s blood tingled not unpleasantly with the 
shock. 

“ All right, sir? ” queried the sailor. 

“ Perfectly all right! These boards keep me up 
fine. I don’t have to swim hardly at all.” 

“ Get your legs kicking a little, just the same, to 
keep the blood goin’,” the sailor advised. 

“ Are you going to try and swim for the ship, 
now? They’re still sending up rockets! ” 

“ Nope. We’d never get there. Better try an’ 
follow the boat. I’ve a hunch that blasted turtle 
dived to-get under an island o’ weed. If he did, he 
won’t ever tow the boat through. She’ll stick fast. 

“ Anyway, she’s gone, an’ we’ve got to keep afloat 
the best way we can. It’ll begin to get daylight 
about two bells o’ the mornin’ watch. That’s a little 
over four hours, yet. Can you stand it? ” 

“ I’ve often been in swimming all afternoon; that’s 
more than four hours.” 

“ These here hours’ll seem longer to you’n those. 
I was afloat for two days an’ two nights, once.” 

As the boy made no comment to this, Brown 
snapped out: 

“ Keep talkin’! ” 

“ What for? ” retorted the boy, annoyed by the 
curt order. 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 107 


“ Helps to pass the time.” 

Brown did not add that he was anxious to aid 
Bernard to overcome the lethargy which rapidly 
overcomes a swimmer thrown into a warm sea, al¬ 
most as dangerous in its way as the “ cramps ” which 
so easily attack a swimmer in a cold sea. The sailor 
knew by experience that the body becomes more 
easily water-logged when the peripheral nerves are 
allowed to relax. 

“ What do you expect me to talk about?” he 
asked in a disgruntled way. 

“ You’re one of these scientific chaps, ain’t you, 
even if you are a youngster? Tell me how this here 
weed got here; or maybe you don’t know! ” 

This latter aspersion piqued Bernard’s vanity, as 
it was intended to do. 

“ Oh, yes, I do know,” snapped back the boy, 
none too amiably. “ It grows mainly in the Gulf of 
Mexico and in the Caribbean Sea.” 

“ That’s a long way from here,” persisted Brown, 
seeing that the boy stopped. 

“ I know it is! ” retorted Bernard. “ That’s what 
I’m explaining to you, if you wouldn’t be so con¬ 
foundedly impatient! 

“ When the stems of this Gulf-weed become too 
long and reach near the top of the water, they grow 


108 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


brittle and are easily broken off. The weed floats 
up to the surface, and, as there's a current of several 
miles an hour in the Gulf, the weed shoots out of 
the Florida Straits and is carried up here by the 
Gulf Stream. A sort of back eddy switches it back 
to this Dead Sea in the middle of the ocean, and 
here it stays. That’s why this place is called the 
Sargasso Sea, after the scientific name (Sargassum 
baccijerum ) of the seaweed.” 

“ You mean it’s all dead weed? It doesn’t look 
like it! ” 

“ No, it isn’t dead, though I suppose, in a way, 
you could call it dying—that is, dying slowly. Ac¬ 
cording to what Lee told me last night, this Gulf- 
weed grows very freely in the Gulf of Mexico, just 
piles up in huge masses everywhere it can find the 
exact depth and the kind of bottom it likes. It’s 
got to have a lot of sunshine, too. It takes the sun 
to make it grow. 

“ But when it gets broken off from its rock-hold, 
and is carried up by the Gulf Stream or any other 
current, it’s just like a cut flower in a vase full of 
water. It goes on growing, after a fashion, in the 
same way that a rosebud put into water will open, 
or some wildflowers will live for a long time, opening 
and shutting morning and evening. They’re dying, 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 109 

of course, since they're without roots, but it's a sort 
of death delayed." 

He paused for a moment to watch the curve of a 
rocket from the ship, vainly pointing them out the 
way to safety. 

“ This Gulf-weed lives in much the same kind of 
way," he went on. “ It grows vegetatively, as bota¬ 
nists call it, but it can't reproduce itself. If it could, 
I suppose, this whole sea would soon become solid, 
so that you could walk on it, as some of the old 
stories used to tell that castaway folk did." 

“ I don’t see why it doesn't get solid, if there’s 
more 'n' more weed floatin' up all the time," the sailor 
commented, not that he was at all interested in 
marine botany, but merely to keep Bernard's mind 
occupied and active. 

“ Ah, but there is a reason, though," the boy went 
on, his interest increasing as he extended his ex¬ 
planation. “ When this seaweed is growing in the 
Gulf of Mexico, properly fixed to the sea-bottom, 
not only has it got the necessary organs of repro¬ 
duction and all the rest of the functions of the sim¬ 
ple alga or marine plant to which it belongs, but, in 
addition to that, it grows a very large number of 
gas bladders—those are the little round vesicles 
which look like berries, Brown—maybe almost as 


110 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

many bladders on their little stalks as there are 
leaves on the stem. Anyway, there are at least 
eight bladders to every ten or twelve leaves. 

“ Now, when that weed gets detached, and starts 
floating in the Gulf Stream, it doesn’t seem to have 
the strength, or the nourishment, or something, to 
put out the same proportion of gas-bladders, al¬ 
though it seems to have no trouble putting out 
leaves. The result is that it gets less buoyant, and 
becomes more and more submerged. Even what 
looks like a fresh bit of weed, here in the Sargasso 
Sea, will only have five or six gas-bladders to the 
dozen leaves, and the older pieces may have only 
three or four. 

“ Now, Gulf-weed needs a good deal of sunlight, 
and, to get that, it must either grow in very clear 
water or else be very near to the top. If it sinks a 
little low, naturally, it gets less sunlight. The 
lessening of sunlight lowers its vitality and makes it 
all the harder for the seaweed to form gas bladders. 
The slowly growing leaves make it heavier and 
heavier. 

“ About a couple of fathom down, the Gulf-weed 
gets to be dark brown, instead of golden-colored, the 
leaves are long and harsh, and the gas-bladders be¬ 
come small or even shrivelled. It's just coming to 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 111 

the point where it's heavier than the water, and so, 
its life over, it sinks slowly to the bottom. So you 
see, Brown, while there’s always a new lot of weed 
coming in from the Gulf Stream, about the same 
proportion sinks in the sea.” 

“ Them berries ain’t fruits, then; there’s no way 
of eatin’ ’em? ” 

“ Why, no! Seaweeds don’t have fruits and flow¬ 
ers! They’re algae-” and Bernard passed into a 

long description of the very simple forms of plant 
life which are to be found in sea water, Brown strug¬ 
gling to show an interest in what he heard, but in¬ 
wardly congratulating himself that he was keeping 
away the dreaded lethargy from his young com¬ 
panion. 

When the subject flagged, the sailor began to spin 
yarns about his former shipwreck, adding the most 
improbable and impossible features in order to 
arouse the spirit of contradiction in the boy, thereby 
successfully keeping a high pitch of nervous energy 
in both of them. 

Gradually the east lightened with the grayness of 
false dawn, and Brown breathed a sigh of relief, for, 
by day, at least, there was a great likelihood of their 
being seen, and he was getting anxious about Ber¬ 
nard’s endurance. 



112 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ It’s too bad this here weed ain’t solid, like you 
say people used to think,” he remarked. “ I 
wouldn’t be sorry to feel something under my feet.” 

“ There ought to be lots of wreckage floating 
about, I should think,” suggested Bernard, hope¬ 
fully. “ Daylight may give us a chance to see.” 

“ You’re gettin’ pretty tired, eh? ” 

“ A little.” 

“ Not numb at all? You can wiggle your toes all 
right? ” 

Bernard tried. 

“ I can move them a little bit, but they feel 
mighty stiff.” 

“ That’ll be all right. You’ll warm up as soon as 
the sun gets to shinin’! ” 

It was getting lighter rapidly, and the coming day¬ 
light revealed them hemmed in on three sides by 
weed, apparently not very dense, but still thick 
enough to prevent swimming. 

“ We ought to be able to see the Kittiwake, now,” 
suggested the boy, though with little hope in his 
tone, for he felt instinctively that, had the ship been 
within sight, Brown would have seen her long be¬ 
fore, and would have said so. 

“ Maybe, when it gets a bit lighter, we will,” came 
the reply, and Bernard’s heart sank, for he knew 


LOST IN THE SARGASSO 113 


that this answer implied but a small hope of seeing 
the ship. 

They swam on, slowly, respectively depending on 
the boards and the oar to keep afloat, and, presently, 
the sun rose gloriously, its very first rays causing 
Bernard to realize how wise had been Brown’s ad¬ 
vice regarding the retention of his hat. 

Eagerly the two of them scanned the surface of the 
sea, first, hopefully, where they had seen the rockets, 
and then vainly, around the entire circle of the 
horizon. 

There was a lump in the boy’s throat as he turned 
to his companion. 

“ You don’t see her, Brown? ” 

“ Nope,” said the sailor, “ I don’t. An’ we’re a 
thousand miles, good, from the nearest land! ” 


CHAPTER V 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 

The reality of being far from all human help, 
once definitely grasped, began to gnaw at Bernard’s 
powers of resistance. His legs suddenly seemed to 
have grown pounds heavier. The stiffness in his 
feet increased proportionately. 

Brown, on the contrary, was stimulated to greater 
effort. Not only was the question of saving his own 
life at stake, but he had also the responsibility of 
the boy. 

Rising as high out of the water as the buoyancy 
of the air would permit, he scanned the sea with the 
piercing glance of a fish-hawk. Accustomed to long 
hours on the lookout, the slightest difference on the 
surface of the water attracted his attention. 

No longer could he arouse Bernard’s interest, no 
matter what he said, and this worried him sorely. 

Suddenly, with a sharp exclamation, he turned 
at a sharp right angle and began to swim vigorously, 
pushing his oar before him. 

a What is it?” queried Bernard, struck by the 

sailor’s evident eagerness. 

114 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 115 


“I thought I saw—yes, that’s right! Here’s an 
old log! Bully boy, we’re in luck! ” 

Bernard’s hopes rose with a jump, but when he 
swam beside the sailor and saw nothing but a 
barnacle-grown piece of ship’s timber, they sank 
again, for this did not answer to his expectations. 

“ Why! It’s nearly water-logged! ” he said, dis¬ 
gustedly. 

“ So ’tis, but it’s floatin’ just the same. It’ll be 

* 

more use’n you think. Just watch! ” 

He straddled one end of the log, his weight just 
sinking the end until only just his nose and mouth 
were out of the water, but, like a seesaw, this weight 
brought the other end high and dry. 

“ Now you climb on that log an’ lie flat down in 
the sun. In ten minutes, you’ll be dry an’ warm.” 

“ But you? ” 

“ Ten minutes more o’ this won’t hurt me. After 
that time, you come an’ sit here in the water, an’ 
I’ll go an’ take a warm. Then you’ll take a half- 
hour o’ toastin’, an’ I’ll take a half-hour o’ toastin’, 
turn an’ turn about. While you’re restin’, take a 
bite o’ biscuit an’ a drink o’ fresh water. After 
your second rest, you’ll feel as lively as a kitten.” 

Bernard wanted to protest and let the sailor warm 
up, first, but he knew that Brown was right. While 


116 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

careful not to let go of the splintered stern thwart of 
the boat, which certainly had saved his life during 
the night, he stretched himself on the log which the 
sailor’s weight brought endwise partly up out of the 
water. 

Several minutes passed before the circulation be¬ 
gan to return, and his legs and feet tingled as 
though he had been stung by nettles. 

“ Wow! ” he exclaimed. “I feel as if I’d been 
swimming in a bunch of those stinging jellyfish! ” 

“ Prickling, eh? That’s fine! That’s what I 
wanted to hear! Now, you slide out to this end of 
the log, an’ give me a chance.” 

Bernard did so, but his weight was not sufficient 
to bring the log out of the water high enough for 
Brown to lie on, and remain dry. 

“ You couldn’t stand on it, eh? ” the sailor queried. 

“ I can try! ” 

The boy did so, but he slid off the slimy surface 
immediately. 

“ I feel an old ring-bolt here, though,” he re¬ 
marked. “ Do you suppose, if I put the boards of 
the thwart crosswise on the log, and jammed the 
ring-bolt in where the wood is splintered, it would 
make a foothold? I might be able to stand upright 
on that.” 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 117 

“ Have a whack at it! I sure would like a chance 
to get warmed up, myself.” 

After several attempts, the boards were thrust 
into position. The perch was insecure, especially as 
there was a trifle of swell on the sea, but Bernard 
managed to keep his poise for half an hour and 
more, though feeling like a tight-rope walker, or a 
Canadian lumber-jack rolling logs down “ white 
water ” on the spring log drive. 

It took Brown a little longer than Bernard to get 
his circulation back to normal, for he had not the 
resiliency of youth, although he had more endurance. 
But, presently, he got warmed through and dry. 
Thereupon he munched a couple of ship’s biscuit, 
and took a good drink of water. 

“ Now,” said he, “ I’m fit for anything until night¬ 
time! Slide along the middle of the log, an’ come 
an’ have some grub! ” 

Although the old timber was a good deal water¬ 
logged, so that it sank a few inches below the sur¬ 
face, still it served as a kind of watery seat and 
gave both of them a rest. Brown had expected 
greater supporting power from it, but the thought¬ 
ful fellow did not want the boy to see his disappoint¬ 
ment. 

“ Think I’ll swim around a bit,” he said, “ an’ see 


118 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

if I can get hold of any more wreckage. We might 
find enough to make a raft! ” 

But Bernard paid no heed; he was staring hard 
at a distant patch of weed. 

“ Look here, Brown! ” he exclaimed excitedly. 
“ Isn’t there something white over there? ” 

“ Where? ” 

The boy pointed. 

“ By the Great Clove Hitch, it’s the boat! What 
do you know about that! ” 

The sailor made as though to slap his thigh, but 
only succeeded in splashing himself. 

“ Split the ratchet! I forgot I was sittin’ in 
water! ” 

Bernard laughed almost gaily, the bite of food 
and the sight of the boat having brightened his 
spirits amazingly. 

“ Do you suppose we can bail her out? ” 

“ Four of us could lift her enough to do it,” said 
the sailor doubtfully. “ As for two—I don’t know. 
We can have a shot at it, anyway. I’ll go an’ see 
how she is. You stay there. No need to exert 
yourself more’n you have to.” 

Rested and refreshed, he set off with a powerful 
stroke. As he had said, he was a good swimmer, 
but, evidently enough, he found it difficult to battle 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 119 


through the weed. He tugged at the boat for a 
while, and then swam back. 

“ You’ve got your turtle still,” he said, “ but I 
think he’s dead.” 

“ Cut the rope, then! ” 

This time, it was the sailor who objected. 

“ I’ve got another idea. S’pose we tow this log 
to where the boat is.” 

“ And then? ” 

“ Hitch the turtle to the log. That way we’ll 
have the boat free, and the turtle to boot.” 

“ Great stuff, Brown! ” 

The boy’s enthusiasm for science, which had been 
at a low ebb during the past few hours, began to 
mount again. 

“ We might be able to find out what’s in his 
stomach, yet! ” 

“ Or put him in ours! ” 

Bernard looked sharply at the sailor. 

“ That’s what you were thinking about, when you 
were so anxious to save the turtle, eh? ” 

“ Why, sure! The longer we can make the biscuit 
last, the better chance we’ve got. You haven’t seen 
any sign o’ the ship, have you? An’ any turtle’s 
good enough eatin’, when a chap’s hungry.” 

“ Well, come along and make him fast, then! ” 


120 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Slipping into the water, the two swam with long 
side-strokes, pushing the log in front of them. It 
was heavy to move, being so water-logged, but the 
distance to the boat was not great. 

“ That was a slick idea of yours, following, the boat 
all night, Brown.” 

“ Wait till we get her right side up an’ afloat, afore 
we begin to brag.” 

In less than an hour, they had managed to push 
the log close beside the boat. 

“ Pm a-goin’ to dive down an’ pay a visit to Mr. 
Turtle,” then said the navy man. 

But Bernard dissuaded him. 

“ That's dangerous. You might strike weed com¬ 
ing up again, and if you couldn’t get your head 
above water, you’d be done for.” 

The sailor pondered for a moment. 

“ Maybe you’re right, sir. Better not chance it. 
Well, I’ll try to give the painter a turn around the 
ring-bolt and take two half-hitches in it.” 

“ And if the turtle starts off again?” 

“ Then we’ll know he’s alive, anyway, an’ it’ll 
worry him some more to have to tow that log along! 
Are you ready, sir? We’ve got to dive down just a 
yard or so to grab the chain.” 

“ Come on, then! ” 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 121 


Both dived. 

Four bare feet splashed simultaneously above the 
surface of the sea. 

Thirty seconds after, both came up, almost at the 
same second, each one with a firm hand-hold on the' 
painter chain. 

“ Ship-shape an’ Bristol fashion! ” approved the 
sailor. 

“ And never a kick out of Mr. Turtle, either! ” 
commented Bernard. 

“ Oh, he’s gone where the good niggers go, I’m 
thinkin’. What turtle soup we could have, if we’d 
only got a pot! ” 

“ And a fire! ” 

“ We can make that, all right. I’ve a ‘ briquette ’ 
an’ you’ve got your drawin’-paper.” 

For the first time since the evening before, Ber¬ 
nard thought of his sketches, in which he had taken 
such a pride. 

“Nice shape my paintings will be in! ” he re¬ 
marked ruefully. “ I guess the paper’s about all 
they’ll be good for. And that’s all wet to a 
pulp.” 

“ I wouldn’t worry over that,” said Brown, a little 
scornfully, for he regarded all oceanographic work 
as a kind of child’s-play for grown-ups; “ if you don’t 


122 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

get back to the ship, it won’t matter; an’ if you do, 
you can make a plenty more.” 

Far from consoling the boy, this only nettled him. 

“ How long are we supposed to be holding up 
this confounded turtle? ” he complained. " He’s 
heavy! ” 

“ Just a second, sir! ” 

The sailor disappeared beneath the surface. 
When he came up again, the farther end of the log 
was sticking up out of the water. 

“ You can let go, now. I’ve made the beggar fast. 
He’ll stay there till the Tropics freeze, unless some 
one casts him off.” 

“ Or until we’re picked up! ” added Bernard with 
attempted cheerfulness. 

“ Sure, or until we’re picked up,” the sailor echoed, 
but less confidently. “ Anyway, we’ve grub an’ 
water for a week; three days’ rations for a crew o’ 
four is enough for seven days for two, if we go 
easy.” 

“ And how about the boat? ” 

“ I cut her adrift, she’s free. But the bow’s badly 
stuck in the weed, an’ it’ll be a mean job to get.her 
out. Like you said, it ain’t pleasant divin’ under 
that weed. Makes you feel like the water was all 
full o’ snakes.” 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 123 


Freeing the boat was difficult, much more difficult 
than either of them had expected. The turtle must 
have struggled all night long, and had pulled the 
boat this way and that, entangling the skiff until 
she was like a fly in a spider’s web. Apparently, 
then, utterly confused, the turtle had turned and 
run his head into a kink of the rope and then con¬ 
tinued to flounder furiously until he had strangled 
himself. 

It was not until well on in the afternoon that the 
two castaways, thoroughly exhausted, pulled the 
boat into clear water, and sat on their log to take a 
rest. 

“ But how are we going to bail her out? ” queried 
Bernard. “ The water will come in at one side as 
fast as we can put it out at the other.” 

“ That’s jest the trouble,” the other agreed. 
“ Afore we found that log, I didn’t know myself how 
to do it.” 

“ How’s the log going to help? ” 

“ I don’t know if it’s a-goin’ to work,” Brown re¬ 
plied, “ but here’s my idee! First of all, there’s the 
weight o’ the turtle on one end o’ the log. That’s 
a kind o’ leverage. S’pose we go to the other end, 
an’ put our weight on that. Seein’ as we’re heavier’n 
the turtle, that’ll bring our end o’ the log down. 


124 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

We slip that end under the boat, as near amidships 
as we can. See that, so far? ” 

“ Sure! But I don’t see how that’s going to help 
much.” 

“ Let me go on! After we’ve got the log under, 
we let go, softly, just so’s the weight o’ the turtle’ll 
keep the log in place, keep it from slidin’ along the 
keel, like. Then we go to the turtle end o’ the log 
an’ heave down on that. The weight of all three 
ought to tilt up the boat a bit, even if it’s only a few 
inches, enough, anyway, to slop some o’ the water 
out of her. We can’t expect to lift her clear, or 
it’d be easy. 

“ Then, while I hold down the log, bein’ the 
heavier, you go an’ try an’ slide the boat over the 
side o’ the log, easy like, opposite way to where she 
was pointin’ when we lifted her. If we’re lucky, an’ 
can strike it just right, she ought to slide over into 
the water with maybe an inch o’ free-board. Then, 
if we could bail her out, just a few drops at a time, 
without touching her side the least bit, she’d begin 
to float an’ we’d get there in the end.” 

Bernard considered this plan in all its details. 

“ It doesn’t sound right, somehow,” he said, “ but 
the boat’s a light one and the scheme might work. 
Anyway, I can’t think of any other. It’s worth try- 


I 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 125 

ing, that's sure, and there's no sign of the Kitti- 
wake !" 

They tried, once, twice, a dozen times. 

Twice in these twelve attempts they almost suc¬ 
ceeded. It was not until the fourteenth trial that 
Brown's plan worked exactly as he had originally 
planned it, and the little skiff, having been suffi¬ 
ciently tilted to let some of the water slop out, slid 
over the end of the log and into the water on the 
other side without swamping herself anew. 

Brown had spoken of an inch or two of free-board. 
There was scarcely half an inch! 

With infinite precaution, they moved her, just by 
light touches of the finger-tips, until she was in the 
lee of the log and free from danger of shipping water 
by even the tiniest ripple. Then Brown, treading 
water beside the boat, but so delicately as not to 
make any stir, began to work the bailer, careful not 
to make the slightest wave, which would compel the 
weary work to be begun all over again. In ten min¬ 
utes, the free-board was an inch high. In half an 
hour, two inches, and the danger from ripples was 
greatly reduced. Before an hour had passed, the 
little skiff began to show some buoyancy. 

The vagueness of a scarce-dared hope now took 
on the firmer outlines of expectancy, the more so as, 


126 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

twice in the afternoon, a faint blur of smoke on the 
horizon seemed to hold out a promise that the Kitti- 
wake was still searching for them, or, at least, that 
she had not steamed away. 

Evening was drawing down when the boat was 
sufficiently clear for Bernard to climb on Brown’s 
shoulders and delicately to step into the boat. Then 
the bailer was plied fast and furiously, and, in half 
an hour more, she was free of water. Brown 
climbed in. 

“ Feels good to be a sailor again, an’ not a bloomin’ 
mermaid! ” was his only comment. 

They jammed the stern thwart back into place 
as best they could, and gladly unfastened the water- 
keg and the biscuit-box which had been like lead 
around their necks during all that long day of work 
in the water. 

“You turn in, right now,” was the sailor’s next 
order. “ It’s sure time for a watch below. You’re 
still wet through, an’ we ought to dry an’ get our 
clothes dry afore sundown. That log saved us, 
though; we’d never ha’ got through a day’s work 
like that, without a chance to rest, now an’ again. 
Take a sleep, sir! We’ll have to keep watch an’ 
watch to-night, in case the Kittiwake comes our 
way.” 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 127 

“You think she’s still looking for us? That smoke 
was a long way off! ” 

“Sure, she’s on the hunt! What do you think? 
Anyway, it’s a sea rule to spend two days lookin’ for 
any one that’s gone overboard, if there’s a ghost of a 
chance. 

“ I reckon she’s probably steamin’ in a slow spiral, 
beginnin’ small an’ gettin’ bigger. All to-day, most 
like, she’s been circlin’ pretty close to where we were 
last seen. Our disappearance must ha’ struck ’em 
as a reg’lar sea mystery.” 

“ But you think she’ll circle out wider, and find 
us?” 

“ Swing out wider, she sure will, but findin’ us in 
all this weed’s another thing. We’ve got a better 
chance, now we’re in the boat, for she stands out o’ 
the water a bit, is painted white, an’ easy to see.” 

“ But that won’t help us at night! ” 

“ Oh, yes, it will. It’s a safe bet they’ve rigged 
up the searchlight, to-day.” 

“ Why not last night? ” 

“ It’s stowed away, for use in war-time an’ 
maneuvers, an’ it takes the electricians a few hours 
to get everything wired up right.” 

“ That’s all very well, but still-” 

“No more talkin’, now! Lie down an’ go to 



128 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


sleep, while the sun is still shinin’ enough to keep 
you warm. I’ll give you some grub when you wake 
up.” 

The night was far advanced when at last Bernard 
stirred. As on the night before, the first thing he 
saw was a green rocket, but, right beside it, was the 
nervous beam of a searchlight, sweeping the surface 
of the sea in a great white finger of brilliance. 

“ There they come! ” cried the lad, triumphantly. 

“ Yep, they’re cornin’,” agreed the sailor, though 
less contentedly. “ They’re makin’ a whale of a 
wide circle, though, an’ steamin’ slow. At the rate 
she’s goin’, I reckon it’ll be two or three hours, good, 
before she comes near enough for any one on board 
to spot us. I can’t help any, right now. Are you 
fit enough to keep watch? ” 

“ Me? I’m as wide-awake as if I’d had a night’s 
sleep in my bed at home! ” 

“ Fine! ” 

He dropped his voice to a note of gravity. 

“ It means a serious watch, you understand? If 

you don’t keep awake it may cost the lives o’ the 
two of us! ” 

“ Don’t worry, Brown; I won’t drop off! ” 

“ Then I will. I’m about all in.” 

He was. Not one minute passed before the sailor 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 129 


was in a sound and absolutely motionless sleep, ut¬ 
terly worn out. It was amazing that he had kept 
up so long, especially after his exertions in diving, 
for he had been under water thirty or forty times, 
and, save for short rests on the slippery log, had 
been working in water for nearly twenty-four hours. 

The rockets from the Kittiwake continued to go 
off at rare intervals, one every half-hour; the search¬ 
light swept the sea in long scythe-strokes of illumi¬ 
nation. Watching carefully, Bernard could see that 
the light was gradually coming nearer, but at an 
angle which would take the searching ship wide of 
their path. Quite obviously, great intercepting 
banks of weed prevented the ship from maintaining 
a series of concentric circles. The longer he watched, 
the more sure it seemed that the course of the ship 
would lead her some distance away. Although 
Brown was sleeping profoundly, Bernard decided to 
wake him. 

“ I’m afraid they’re going to miss us, clean,” he 
said, “ and I thought you ought to know before the 
ship gets any farther. We’ve got one oar. Ought 
we to scull so as to try to cross her path? If only 
we had some sort of a signal! ” 

Brown yawned portentously and rubbed his eyes, 
listening to the boy the while. 


130 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Scullin’s useless/' he answered, “ at night-time, 
anyway; we’d only run the risk o’ gettin’ tangled up 
in weed. As for a signal, we’ll do what we can, 
though it ain’t much! 

“ I reckon I can make jest one blaze. In the in¬ 
side o’ your sketch-papers there were a few pieces not 
wet, because the rest o’ them had stuck, all round 
the edges. Then, while you were snorin’ your head 
off, I sculled a bit here an’ there an’ picked some 
dry bits o’ frayed seaweed stickin’ above the surface 
o’ the water on a bank o’ weed. I’ve a small ball 
o’ rope yarn in my pocket, an’ tar’ll burn, even if 
it’s wet. I dried some cigarette papers in the wind 
an’ I think they’d take light. We can only try it, 
anyway.” 

“ And if they don’t see it? ” 

“ Well, then, I reckon to-morrow we’ll have to 
make a sail out of our shirts an’ a mast out o’ the 
oar, an’ try to get into the track o’ ships, either north 
to the Gulf Stream or south to the trades, whichever 
way the wind’s blowin’. But we’ll try the blaze, 
first.” 

“ And when do you think we ought to make it? ” 

Brown kept quiet for a few minutes while he 
watched the movements of the searchlight. 

“ You’re right,” he said, “ the ship’s sweepin’ out 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 131 


in a big circle an’ drawin’ away from us, steadily. 
If we're goin' to do it at all, it'll have to be done 
now." 

He took the briquette out of his pocket and began 
the meagre preparations. 

“ Wait till after the next rocket goes up," he 
added. “ We don't want to run the risk o’ havin’ 
our little blaze blinded out by the glare." 

Making a little nest of the tarred rope yarn, the 
sailor put the dried cigarette papers in the middle 
and surrounded the whole with a cone of paper 
made from the leaves taken from Bernard’s sketch- 
block and intended to act as a wind-shield. 

“ There she goes! " 

The green flare of the rocket shot into the sky. 

As the sparks settled, died down and went out, 
Brown bent, whirred the little steel wheel against 
the flint, and the benzine-soaked wick of the 
briquette flamed, spluttering indeed, from the water 
that was in it, but alight none the less. The ciga¬ 
rette paper lighted immediately and the tarred rope 
yarn caught fire, burning with a yellow and smoky 
flame. 

But how small! 

“ They'll never see that!" cried Bernard, who 
had somehow expected a small bonfire. 


132 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ It’s every scrap we’ve got! ” 

Both fixed their eyes on the spot whence the green 
rocket had flared up, their hearts thumping with 
anxiety. 

Then, suddenly, like a darting falcon, leaving its 
steady circling sweep, the searchlight flashed in 
their direction, close to them, away again, closer and 
then still farther. 

“ They don’t see us! ” 

There was a wail in the boy’s voice. 

“ They’ve seen something! ” 

The sailor crumpled the pieces of paper and put 
them in the dying fire. They blazed up for a second. 
“Look! Look! Look!” 

Three rockets leaped simultaneously into the air. 
“What does that mean, Brown? What’s that?” 
“ It means: ‘ We’re Standing By! ’ ” 

“ Have they seen us? Have they seen us? ” 

The boy’s voice was shrill with a panicky eager¬ 
ness. 

“They’ve seen something, that’s sure! ” 

How slowly the seconds passed! 

“Yep, they’re turnin’, boy! ” 

But the searchlight, while wandering near them, 
sometimes within only a few yards, and sometimes a 
quarter of a mile away, never actually shone on the 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 133 

little boat, so solitary a speck on that vast expanse 
of dark and weed-filled water. 

“ Another fire, Brown; quick! ” 

“ We’ve got no more! ” 

Once, indeed, the searchlight came so near that 
the two castaways could almost have touched the 
lighted spot of water with the oar, but it shot away 
immediately and commenced to range far, far be¬ 
yond where they were. It was clear that the Kitti - 
wake was running at half speed, but it was also clear 
that she was not on a straight course for them. 

The strain was fearful, for, if the searchlight did 
not actually fall on that wee spot which was the 
boat, the ship would go steaming on, still looking, 
still hunting, and would not pass on that circle 
again. She might come even within a few hundred 
yards of them, just out of hearing, but with their 
last chance of signalling gone, what could they do 
to attract attention? 

“ She’s headed nearer to us than she was before,” 
said Brown encouragingly, but he knew that this 
meant but little. 

The steamer was surely drawing nearer, but, the 
closer she approached the more sure did it appear 
that she would pass nearly a mile away. 

Bernard, who had held up bravely, suddenly felt 


134 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

as if he could scream for sheer rage and disappoint¬ 
ment. 

“Isn’t there something that’ll burn? The boat! 
Break off some splinters! ” 

“ The wood’s all soaked.” 

“ A handkerchief—something! ” 

“ Everything’s soppin’ wet.” 

Then an idea came to Bernard. 

“ Those matches of mine? ” 

“ They ain’t no drier’n the rest.” 

“The phosphorus won’t be! Your briquette 
might light them! ” 

“ Try it! ” agreed the sailor, shrugging his shoul¬ 
ders. 

In frantic haste the boy pulled out the match¬ 
box, which was, indeed, thoroughly soaked. 

The flame of the briquette, at first, had no effect, 
except that, probably, of drying the chemicals, for, 
with a sudden “whoof! ” the heads of the matches 
exploded, giving a bright flash which lasted for not 
more than a fraction of a second. It was all they 
could do. Would it succeed? 

The searchlight sprang at them! 

Evidently the operator was keenly on the watch, 
but the flash had been so brief that he could not 
mark down the place. 


A SEARCHLIGHT RESCUE 135 

“ Brown! She’s changed her course! They saw 
it!” 

“ Ay, she’s headed our way, now.” 

The two watchers could now see both the port 
and the starboard lights of the vessel together, sure 
sign that she was coming bow on, but she was coming 
very slowly. 

Then, quite suddenly, the slow sweep of the 
searchlight fell full on the boat! 

Brown, who had been sitting with his shirt off, 
expectantly, leaped to his feet and waved the shirt 
madly in the full glare of the brilliant white beam. 

The light steadied, stayed fixed! 

The whistle of the Kittiwake sent out a siren 
scream, as if the very machinery of the vessel were 
rejoicing. 

Presently the black bulk of the steamer forged 
up close, the searchlight never leaving them. She 
was now so close that they could hear the telegraph 
on the bridge ring for “ Quarter-Speed,” and then 
for “ Stop.” 

Then came the captain’s voice: 

“ Boat ahoy! Is that you, Brown?” 

“ Ay, ay, sir; it’s me.” 

“ Both of you all right? ” 

“ Both, sir! ” 


136 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


A ringing cheer burst out impulsively from those 
on board. 

The telegraph rang for “ Turn ahead,” and the 
steamer forged slowly nearer. 

Came another voice, that of the boatswain’s mate: 

“ Below there! ” 

"Ay, ay!” 

“ Stand by for a line! ” 

The line came whizzing. Brown caught it deftly 
and made it fast. 

A moment later, a rope ladder was dropped over 
the side. 

“ Do you want help? ” 

Brown answered: 

“ We can make it, sir, all right.” 

“ Get aboard, then! ” 

But Bernard suddenly piped up: 

“ I won’t leave my turtle! ” 

“ What’s that? ” 

It was the voice of the chief of the expedition. 

“ Oh, Professor,” excitedly cried Bernard, from 
the darkness, “ I’ve got a hawk’s-bill turtle tied to 
a log, here, and I’m just sure he’s got a new specimen 
inside him! ” 



Covrtesy of U. S. Coast Guard. 

Below a Thousand Fathoms. 

The crew of the U. S. S. Modoc making a deep-sea cast; the sailor 
at the rail is unclasping a water-bottle which has been submerged 

for observations. 









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CHAPTER VI 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 

A hot meal, a stirring hot drink, and Bernard was 
hurried off to his bunk, for Professor McDree felt 
that the boy had gone through enough excitement, 
without having to repeat his adventures to the other 
members of the expedition, intensely curious as they 
were to hear them. The bare outlines of the story, 
especially the capture of the boat by the turtle and 
the mad race through the night, were learned from 
Brown, who was, naturally, the hero of his mess. 

With this as a basis, the scientists waited patiently 
until after dinner the following evening. At the 
regular meeting of the “ Chin Club,” by common 
consent all reports were set aside in order that every 
one might listen to the boy’s story, for here was a 
veritable tale of the Sargasso Sea! 

Knowing his audience, Bernard kept a close watch 

on himself not to make the account seem boastful 

or exaggerated. Indeed, the tale did not need any 

extra coloring. Amazing as it seemed, there could 

not be the slightest doubt as to its entire accuracy. 

The boy had been picked up nearly thirty-five miles 

137 


138 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

away from the place where he had been sketching, 
the strangled turtle with a loop of the boat’s painter 
still tight around its neck was a strong proof in itself, 
and the boat revealed all the evidences of the strug¬ 
gle. There was also the log which had played so 
large a part in saving the castaways, and which Lee, 
the botanist, had spent the day in examining with 
delight, having found some rare microscopic algae 
thereon. Furthermore, Brown, who was not espe¬ 
cially imaginative in character, had already given 
his version of the story, which, aside from natural 
differences between the narrators, fitted in with the 
boy’s descriptions in every particular. 

“ So that’s how it was! ” exclaimed the Professor, 
when the long recital had come to an end. “ You 
see, gentlemen, we were all wrong! Not one of us, 
in our most extravagant suggestions, had thought 
of a turtle tugboat! 

“You know, Bernard,” he continued, turning to 
the boy, “ scientists can’t possibly get along without 
theories. Well, there were a good many theories 
about your disappearance, for certainly the way you 
vanished on a summer night in a calm sea was a 
mystery without a parallel! ” 

“We thought of that, Brown and I, and won¬ 
dered what in the world you would have imagined ” 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 139 


“ Personally, I thought that a whale coming up 
to breathe had poked his big head under the boat, 
staving it in, and that you were swimming for your 
lives in the sea. And since the second officer said 
that, a little while before dusk, he had seen you a 
mile away on the starboard bow, rowing towards the 
ship, we weren’t alarmed at first. A mile swim isn’t 
anything in a smooth sea, but, to make sure, we 
sent out the lifeboat. You weren’t to be found any¬ 
where, and you didn’t answer our hails. 

“ Bower had another idea. In these seas there’s a 
specially large medusa with very venomous stinging 
cells, and he thought you might have run across one 
of these creatures and have tried to take it into the 
boat, either as a specimen or as a model for drawing. 
Certain of these jellyfish can sting badly enough to 
give a temporary paralysis, lasting, at the longest, a 
couple of hours. But, when midnight came, and 
you hadn’t returned, this idea of the stinging medusa 
had to be abandoned. 

“ Lee then suggested that you were playing a 
prank on us, and had stayed in the boat trying to 
sketch some of the luminous or luminescent forms 
of the Sargasso Sea, but, when the hours passed by, 
and you didn’t even respond to our rockets, it be¬ 
came clear that the situation was serious. 


140 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


“ At the beginning, some of us were inclined to 
chaff. Nifstrod declared that you must have dived 
down to the 300-fathom line to visit the Giant Squid 
and see if Chu Ting had given a correct description ; 
Montgomery insisted that you and Brown had met 
a mermaid who had arranged to take you down to 
the submerged palaces of the Lost Atlantis. But, 
according to your story, you didn’t have much time 
to do either! ” 

“ We certainly didn’t, Professor McDree, but I’m 
sure if a mermaid had come up and offered to take us 
somewhere pleasant, during that long night swim, 
we’d have accepted right away, no matter where it 
was to! ” 

“ Even to the Lost Atlantis? ” put in Mont¬ 
gomery, the geological expert of the expedition, part 
of whose special work it was to look after deep-sea 
soundings, to make detailed charts of the ocean 
floors, and to help clear up the still unsolved mys¬ 
tery of the origin of the oceans. 

“ I think we’d have gone even there,” Bernard 
answered, “ though I’ve never been sure if such a 
place ever existed. Did it? ” 

At this question the Professor rose hastily from 
his deck-chair, the usual signal for the breaking-up 
of the “ Chin Club ” meetings, for this was a famous 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 141 

subject of dispute among the members of the ex¬ 
pedition. 

“ It’s a bit late to start Montgomery talking on 
that!” he declared emphatically. “But console 
yourself, Bernard; we’re going to try to find out 
definitely about Atlantis, before we start north for 
a study of marine life along the icebergs. Maybe, 
if you ask him nicely, Montgomery will let you tie 
yourself to the deep-sea lead, and you can go down 
a thousand fathom or so, to see what you can find 
down there! ” 

Next morning, after another good night’s rest, 
Bernard felt himself as fit as ever, and reported for 
duty at the laboratory. The Professor had carefully 
scanned the boy’s smudged and wetted color-draw¬ 
ings, so far as they remained recognizable, and, 
though their value was nil in their existing state, he 
considered that they showed a good deal of promise. 
Upon Chu Ting’s advice, he decided to send the boy 
out on another trial. 

Great, accordingly, was Bernard’s delight, when, 
that morning, he was told that he could go out in 
the skiff again, with Brown, the faithful companion 
of his great adventure. 

“ On one condition! ” the chief warned him, half- 
seriously. “ That is, that if the Deep-Sea Serpent 


142 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

does come up to have a look at you, you won’t try 
to put salt on its tail! ” 

Which Bernard promised faithfully. 

For three days, the sea remained calm: ideal 
weather for the various purposes of the expedition, 
such as making careful studies of the character of 
animal and plant life at various levels and depths in 
the sea, dredging the bottom itself and studying the 
floor-dwelling creatures, determining the salinity and 
chemical constitution of the water, and mapping the 
contours and the composition of the deposits of the 
ocean bed. 

During these three days, Bernard remained almost 
constantly in the small boat, without a recurrence 
of any wild adventure. He did not achieve the re¬ 
markable success in his color-drawings which he had 
fondly hoped, for he was under the constant dis¬ 
advantage of having to compare his sketches with 
those of Chu Ting, a comparison which very effi¬ 
ciently knocked all the vanity out of his head. 

None the less, Professor McDree and the Chinese 
artist privately agreed that the boy’s work held great 
possibilities, provided he could be rigorously kept 
away from the habit of slap-dash work, the curse of 
every would-be scientific draughtsman and colorist. 
The chief of the expedition, anxious to help on the 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 143 

career of the son of his old friend, urged Chu Ting 
to undertake the boy’s training, offering a handsome 
personal remuneration, which the Chinese artist 
promptly refused. 

u< To teach those who are wise in their youth is a 
duty; to teach those who are not wise is a peril to 
the state,’ ” said he. “ Such is a saying of Con¬ 
fucius. One should not be paid for doing one’s duty, 
still less for spreading what is a peril to the state.” 

And, following this cryptic acceptation of the re¬ 
sponsibility of tuition, he drove Bernard nearly fran¬ 
tic with compulsory drawing of complicated Radio- 
laria done from a microscope. 

After the three days of calm, the weather turned 
stormy. While this hindered the taking up of fixed 
oceanographical stations, a further week was spent 
in the Sargasso Sea, since wireless soundings and 
surface work could be carried on vigorously in spite 
of rough water, and the Sea itself was explored with 
much care. 

The distribution of weed was found to be ex¬ 
tremely irregular, and though, by slow steaming and 
careful navigation, the Kittiwake did not get into 
any more serious trouble than that of having her 
propeller choked with weed four times, still it was 
made clear that a sailing vessel might find herself 


144 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

in trouble in certain parts of this sea. The captain 
of the Kittiwake, when asked his opinion whether 
the Gulf-weed could actually wreck a ship, shook 
his head doubtfully. 

“ A sailor will always tell you that almost any¬ 
thing can happen at sea,” he answered. “ I suppose 
if a barque were running before a gale, with a good 
spread of sail set, and suddenly got jammed in a 
bank of weed, her masts might go by the board. It 
would be the captain’s fault for carrying too much 
canvas in a sea which it is a navigator’s business to 
avoid. But the thing might occur. 

“ In such a case, if the ship were deeply loaded, 
her boats might not be able to tow her out to clear 
water and she’d be derelict. Yes, it is possible for 
a sailing-ship to be marooned by Gulf-weed in the 
Sargasso Sea, or for the choking of a steamer’s pro¬ 
peller by weed to twist her propeller shaft. While 
I have never heard of such a case, I wouldn’t see any 
reason to disbelieve such an occurrence if it were 
told to me by a responsible ship’s officer. 

“ I’ll go so far as to say that I consider the Sar¬ 
gasso Sea is rightly marked as ‘ dangerous ’ on the 
charts. Since weeds drift here in great quantities, 
derelicts may do so, also, and no lookout can tell 
whether or no there’s a derelict just awash under a 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 145 

thin layer of seaweed. On such, a vessel might easily 
crash and go down. I’ve kept the Kittiwake to ‘ half 
speed ’ ever since we have been in these seas, and, as 
you have probably noticed, gentlemen, I sleep in the 
chart room. Since we’re bearing away from the 
Sargasso, to-morrow, I don’t mind telling you that I 
shall be a good bit easier in my mind when we get 
into open seas.” 

“ We’re going to look for the Lost Atlantis, now, 
Captain,” put in one of the younger men. 

“ Deep soundings!” affirmed the naval officer, 
with a smile. “ At least I sha’n’t be afraid of run¬ 
ning aground on that land! ” 

And, with a word of excuse, he went up on the 
bridge. 

“ Just exactly what is the tradition of the Lost 

r 

Atlantis, Mr. Montgomery? ” Bernard asked, late 
that afternoon, during the before-dinner pause in 
laboratory work, when daylight had grown too dim 
for microscopic study. “ One hears such a lot about 
it, and so little that seems to be true.” 

“ You’ve hit the mark, exactly,” the geologist re¬ 
plied. “ One does hear a great deal about it, and 
very little of what is told is true. The reason why 
the Lost Atlantis is so much talked about, is be¬ 
cause a few sensational half-scientists have taken 


146 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

an old legend, furbished it up with some supposed 
discoveries of modern times, and then used this 
patched-up tale to support some absurd theory of 
their own. 

“ If you really want to know, Bernard, I’ll tell 
you the old legend, show you how it has been mis¬ 
handled, and then give you the real oceanographical 
facts so far as they’re known. Maybe that’ll give 
you better ideas about the ocean bottom than if 
I described it as I would to a group of students in 
my classroom.” 

“ I’ll have to do the classroom work later, prob¬ 
ably,” the boy replied, “ but I would like to get the 
hang of it now, if I could.” 

“ So you shall! ” Montgomery replied heartily, for 
this subject was his special hobby. Nothing inter¬ 
ested the ardent geologist so much as the question 
of the long rolling plains, the hills and valleys, the 
mountains and ravines, the peaks and chasms, and 
all the strange and never-beheld scenery of the bot¬ 
tom of the great oceans. 

“ First of all,” he began, “ let me tell you the old 
tradition. Homer, long, long ago, spoke of a land 
at the setting sun, and several ancient authors, after 
him, seem to have had some vague perception that 
the lands on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 147 

were not necessarily the end of the habitable 
world. 

“ But the Lost Atlantis, as such, does not go back 
as a tradition any farther than a supposed date of 
605 b. c., when certain Egyptian priests were sup¬ 
posed to have told this history of the land beyond 
the sea to Solon, the Athenian legislator. In Plato’s 
4 Timaeus/ written in 398 b. c., he makes the famous 
statement concerning Atlantis, which I have re¬ 
peated so often in my lectures and classes that I 
know it by heart. It runs as follows: 

“ 1 A strange tale, but certainly true, as Solon de¬ 
clared. . . . When Solon was in Egypt, he fell 

into talk with an aged priest of Sais, who said to 
him: 

“ ‘ “ Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children, 
there is not one old (wise) man in Greece. You 
have no traditions and know of but one deluge, 
whereas there have been many destructions of man¬ 
kind, both by flood and fire. . . . 

“‘ “ More, you are ignorant of your own past. 
For, long before Deucalion (the Greek Noah) nine 
thousand years ago, there was an Athens, founded, 
like Sais, by Athena, a city rich in power and wis¬ 
dom, famed for mighty deeds. Of these the great¬ 
est was this: 


148 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ 1 “ At that time there lay an island fronting the 
mouth which you, in your tongue, call The Pillars 
of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar). This island was 
larger than Libya and Asia (as then known) put to¬ 
gether, and there was passage thence for the trav¬ 
eller of that day to the rest of the islands as well as 
from those islands to the continent beyond. The 
sea in front of the Pillars was indeed but a small 
harbor; that which lay beyond the islands, how¬ 
ever, was worthy of the name of ocean, and the land 
which had surrounded that greater sea might truly 
be called a continent. 

“ ‘ “ In this Island of Atlantis had grown up a 
mighty power, whose kings were descended from 
Poseidon (god of the sea) and had extended their 
sway over many islands and over a portion of the 
great continent. Even Libya (North Africa) up to 
the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia 
(Etruria^Italy) submitted to their sway. 

“ ‘ “ Then, O Solon, did the strength of your re¬ 
public become clear to all men, by reason of her 
courage and force. Foremost in the arts of war, she 
met the invader at the head of Greece. Abandoned 
by her allies, she triumphed alone over the western 
foe, delivering from the yoke all the nations within 
the Pillars. 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 149 


“ ‘ “ But afterwards, came a day and a night of 
great floods and earthquakes. The sea engulfed all 
the Atlanteans capable of bearing arms, and Atlantis 
disappeared, swallowed up by the waves. Hence it 
is that this sea (the Atlantic Ocean) is no longer 
navigable by reason of the vast mud-shoals left by 
this vanished island.” ’ ” 

“ My word, what a tale! ” exclaimed Bernard. 

“And it is not the only one of its kind. The 
Carthaginian historians told of a wonderful Island 
of the Meropians, where there was a great civiliza¬ 
tion, extremely rich. This mysterious land, covered 
with handsome palaces and luxuriant gardens, was 
said to be only a few weeks’ sail from the northwest 
coast of Africa. 

“ As for smaller islands which were either sup¬ 
posed to be of a wandering habit, or which have dis¬ 
appeared beneath the sea, there are any number. 
Some of the best-known are the Islands of the Seven 
Cities, Lyonesse, Hy Brasil, Avalon, the Breton city 
of Is, and the Blessed Isles of St. Brendan, which 
latter land was marked on all nautical charts as late 
as the eighteenth century. The Saga of the Voyage 
of St. Brendan is one of the most curious and most 
elusive legends in all sea lore, fantastic, miraculous, 
and yet, here and there, strangely in accord with 


150 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

geographic fact. A very curious tale, especially for 
Americans! ” 

“ And none of these islands ever existed? ” 

“ None! Unless, perhaps, some vague hint of the 
West Indies and of the continent of America had 
reached the ancients from some unknown source. 
Plato’s description of a ring of islands guarding a 
continent, on the same latitude as the Straits of 
Gibraltar, is curiously suggestive of the West Indies. 
What is still more strange is that Pliny declared 
these ‘ Islands of the Hesperides ’ to be forty-two 
days’ sail from the coast of Africa, and Columbus 
took exactly forty-two days to reach the West Indies 
from a port in Spain.” 

“ H’m, that sure is queer! ” 

“ But what really brought the Atlantis notion into 
prominence were the fantastic and absurd inven¬ 
tions of an American writer, one Ignatius Donnelly. 
In the maddest way, this lover—and maker—of 
mysteries, took the old Platonic legend, fabricated 
so-called ' scientific facts ’ right and left with all the 
glibness of an accomplished liar, and set forth a 
harebrained theory of ‘ Atlantis, the Antediluvian 
World ' as a means of solving every difficulty which 
could possibly be imagined, past, present and fu¬ 
ture, in every branch of history and geography.” 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 151 


Bernard grinned. 

“ That must be a wild book! ” he exclaimed. 

“ It is; it’s more than wild! This man Donnelly 
took Plato’s tale of the island described to Solon by 
an Egyptian priest as an established fact. He used 
the legend to prove that a great continent existed. 
He made this supposed land larger than Africa and 
Asia combined, and, when there was some difficulty 
in fitting this overgrown continent into the North 
Atlantic Ocean, he moved degrees of latitude and 
longitude around to suit himself. He went on to 
claim that this antediluvian world of his invention 
was the original Garden of Eden—as well as the 
Asgard of the Northmen and the Happy Hunting 
Ground of the American Indians—and calmly as¬ 
serted that Man must first have been created there, 
since no one could prove that the Creation had taken 
place anywhere else! ” 

“No? You’re chaffing, Mr. Montgomery! ” 

“ I’m not! I have the book down in my cabin, 
right now, and you can see for yourself! But that 
was only the beginning. From that point Donnelly 
started out to show that Atlantis was not only the 
original home of the human race, but also the source 
of all civilization, all language, all religion—every¬ 
thing, in fact! Whites, negroes, Chinese—every- 



152 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

body came from there. Every possible similarity 
he seized on to bolster up his ideas, and every dis¬ 
similarity he explained away by the simple state¬ 
ment that the missing evidence in favor of his 
theory had gone down to the bottom of the sea with 
Atlantis. Handy, eh? 

“ Egypt, according to his idea, was just a little 
colony of Atlanteans. So was Mexico. The fact 
that there were pyramids in both countries—though 
their characters and purposes are quite unlike—he 
proclaimed as an absolute proof. He cared as little 
for dates as he did for degrees of longitude. Al¬ 
though he declared that Atlantis had sunk beneath 
the sea long before the time of Homer, he sent the 
Lost Ten Tribes of Israel there, in spite of the fact 
that the Jewish dispersion didn’t happen until sev¬ 
eral centuries later. Oh, Donnelly didn’t hesitate to 
put in anything which would make his book sensa¬ 
tional and exciting. He got the book sold and him¬ 
self talked about, which was all he wanted.” 

“ And every bit of it was lies? ” 

“ Well, suppose we say that in the light of modern 
knowledge it is incorrect in every particular. That’s 
about the same thing, but it sounds better.” 

“ But isn’t it possible that, sometime, there might 
have been land, there? ” 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 153 


“ Where? ” 

“ Between Europe and America.” 

“ Not only possible, but certain. There was! ” 

Bernard gaped at him open-mouthed. 

“ But I don’t understand, Mr. Montgomery; you 
just said there wasn’t! ” 

“ No, my boy, I said that Donnelly’s statement 
was all wrong. So it was! At the period when 
there may have been land where the Atlantic Ocean 
rolls to-day, there were no human beings. It’s 
doubtful if there were even many mammals, for it 
must have been early in the Tertiary Period. So 
far as that is concerned, at that time there wasn’t 
any America or any Africa, in the definite shape 
that you think of them as continents. 

“ But that’s a long time ago! Generally speaking, 
for the last few million years the main ocean depres¬ 
sions—those below the 2,000-fathom line—have 
been where we see them now, and the main conti¬ 
nental plateaus—including the shallow coastal wa¬ 
ters above the 1,000-fathom line—have remained but 
little changed, if at all. Therefore the supposed 
Lost Continent of Atlantis, inhabited by human be¬ 
ings, and possessing a civilization from which every¬ 
thing else was derived is a pure absurdity, since it 
would have been compelled to occupy a large part 



154 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

of the two great oceanic depressions into which the 
North Atlantic is divided. 

“ Of course, Bernard, shallow seas have intruded 
or receded on the Continental Shelf, here or there, 
according as the land fell or rose, from time to time. 
Thus the relations between land and water have con¬ 
stantly changed, and are still changing, though the 
main forms of the ocean beds and the continental 
plateaus have not.” 

“ I don’t quite see that, Mr. Montgomery,” put in 
the boy. 

“ Yet it’s easy enough. Maybe if I explain it to 
you on a small scale, you’ll be able to understand it 
better. You know that the Mississippi is a very 
muddy river? ” 

“ It sure is! ” agreed Bernard emphatically, re¬ 
calling some summer-time swims in that turbid flood. 

“ And you can see for yourself that all the mud it 
carries down must go somewhere? ” 

“ Yes, into the Gulf of Mexico.” 

“ Where it forms a large delta. This delta, ob¬ 
viously, must be growing every year, eh? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Therefore the shore-line of the Gulf of Mexico, 
at that point, is increasing every year or encroach¬ 
ing on the water; in other words, the relation of 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 155 

land and sea is changing. Now, all the rivers of the 
world are doing the same thing. Every wind that 
blows reduces some infinitesimal portion of a moun¬ 
tain range into dust, and every drop of rain that 
falls carries that dust down into a stream, thus help¬ 
ing to wear down the land and to fill up the sea.” 

“ But, if that keeps on, the sea will get all filled 
up! ” 

“ No danger of that! It’ll take a long time before 
all the land is worn away. The amount of soil, or 
eroded rock, carried down to the sea every year has 
been reckoned as containing nearly four cubic miles, 
and, by another authority, has been estimated as 
weighing over twenty-one billion tons (21,102,704,- 
000 tons). 

“ Sir John Murray, one of the greatest of all 
oceanographers, calculated that, if the present rate 
of erosion continued—and there were no land up¬ 
heavals intervening—the whole of the land surface 
would be transferred to the sea in 6,340,000 years. 
This figure can be multiplied by ten, at least, for 
the rate of deposition would necessarily be reduced 
as the land surface diminished. 

“ So we don’t need to worry about there not being 
any solid ground to stand on, for sixty million years, 
at least. After that, mankind, if it still exists, will 


156 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

have to live in boats or develop fins, the latter prob¬ 
ably, for there’d be no timber and no way of mining 
metals.” 

“ You mean we’d become aquatic mammals like 
whales and seals? ” 

“ Perhaps! ” 

“ But,” protested Bernard, “ I don’t see it, even 
yet. If all the land were worn away, why wouldn’t 
it fill up the sea? Look at the mountains! ” 

“ And think of the ocean ‘ deeps,’ my boy! Two- 
thirds of the surface of the Globe is water, and the 
average depths of oceans and seas is far greater than 
is the average height of land. You ought really, 
Bernard, to try to get an idea of the general shape 
of the ocean floor. 

“ First of all, there is the division between land 
and sea, either the high tide or the low tide mark, 
the laws differing in various countries. The land 
between extreme high tide and extreme low tide is 
known as the ‘ Foreshore.’ Where the gradient is 
slow and tides have a large rise and fall, this fore¬ 
shore may be more than a mile wide; on a cliff coast, 
with small tides, the foreshore may stretch only an 
inch or two. 

“ Next, my boy, you must picture to yourself a 
bottom sloping gradually from the low tide line out 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 157 

to a depth of 100 fathoms; this is called the ‘ Con¬ 
tinental Shelf.’ Its average gradient is about one in 
fifty-seven, so that you’d have to walk about a hun¬ 
dred yards to be out of your depth. In some places 
it is wide—over a hundred miles off New York,—in 
places there is no Continental Shelf, for the bottom 
slopes into deep water right from shore. The aver¬ 
age width, the world over, is a little over five miles. 

“ If such a contour line were drawn on a map of 
Europe, and if the water were withdrawn, it would 
wipe out the Irish Sea, the English Channel, the 
North Sea and the Baltic Sea; Russia, Sweden, 
Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, 
England and Ireland would form an unbroken land. 
Bering Sea is equally shallow, so that northeastern 
Asia and Alaska would join. The Gulf States would 
more than double their land area. Southern Asia 
would nearly reach to Australia, and Indo-China 
would gain a piece of territory as large as the United 
States. The Continental Shelf occupies seven per 
cent, of the water area of the Globe. 

“ The next important belt of water is that which 
overlies a bottom sloping from the 100-fathom depth 
to the 1,000-fathom depth; I call this the ‘ Conti¬ 
nental Step/ This has an area of eight per cent, of 
the surface of the sea.” 



158 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


“ At that rate,” put in Bernard, “ about eighty- 
five per cent, of the water surface of the Earth is 
Ocean, and fifteen per cent, is Marginal Sea.” 

“ Exactly! But, in the North Atlantic, for ex¬ 
ample, the proportion of shallow water is much 
greater. There’s one exceedingly deep place, though, 
where, for more than half a million square miles, the 
bottom is more than 3,000 fathoms below sea level, 
and where the U . S. S. Dolphin reached soundings 
of 4,662 fathoms (27,972 feet). This region, which 
lies northeasterly from the West Indies, is known 
as the Nares Deep. 

“ About the edge of the Continental Step, then, in 
the neighborhood of the 1,000-fathom line, comes a 
much steeper pitch, with a gradient of one in ten; 
this is called the ‘ Continental Slope.’ It is the true 
underwater shore of the Ocean, and you should al¬ 
ways think of the ocean as bordered by this deeply 
hidden shore. 

“ Once you get to the foot of the slope, usually 
somewhere about the 2,000-fathom line, the bottom 
is almost level, for more than half the water area 
of the Earth has a depth of between 2,000 fathoms 
and 3,000 fathoms. A slope of a fathom to a mile, or 
one in 880 would be too small to be noticed; even 
a glass marble wouldn’t roll on so slight a pitch.” 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 159 


“ My word! It must be mighty flat! ” 

“ It is, and, in so vast a plain, the ‘ hills’ and 
‘ mountains’ which form shoals, keys, reefs, or 
islands, are scarcely noticeable. These far-stretch¬ 
ing levels below the 2,000-fathom line form the 
Ocean Beds. 

“ These ocean beds, together with certain perma¬ 
nent land elevations known as ‘ Shield Lands ’—and 
which are the backbones of continents—have not 
changed for millions of years. They form unalter¬ 
able features of the Earth’s surface, in strong con¬ 
trast with the ever-changing but superficial shifting 
of the Marginal Seas. These latter are in constant 
movement, either receding so that the land regains 
a part of the Continental Shelf, or advancing to 
swallow up some of the low-lying stretch above the 
Foreshore. 

“ Now, by considering these various levels, we 
can begin to see how wildly impossible was Don¬ 
nelly’s theory of the Lost Atlantis. 

“ I have shown you the changes—especially in 
Europe—that would come if the Continental Shelf 
were clear of water. Even more sensational things 
would happen if the Continental Step were clear. 
Europe would be solid land with Greenland and 
Greenland with Labrador. As Bering Sea is so shal- 




160 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

low that it would be dried up before, you could drive 
a caterpillar motor-car all round the world and never 
get the wheels wet. The straits of Gibraltar would 
be closed, and the Mediterranean reduced to three 
small lakes, so that the caterpillar car I spoke could 
jump backwards and forwards to Africa. It could 
almost tour to Australia, but not quite, a narrow 
belt of water intervening. 

“ All these changes, however, would be local, or 
rather superficial, for we are dealing only with the 
Marginal Seas. The Ocean Beds, you remember, 
do not change. 

“ The North Atlantic bed, however, shows a very 
remarkable feature. This is the Central Atlantic 
Ridge. South the Continental Step, stretching from 
Ireland to Labrador, is a wide submarine plateau 
with an average depth of 1,400 fathoms. This is 
known as the Telegraph Plateau, because it was 
right over this that the first submarine cables were 
laid. 

“ Exactly midway between Europe and America, 
this ridge turns southwards, and, almost exactly 
equidistant between the land areas of the two hemi¬ 
spheres, it runs clear down to the latitude of Cape 
Horn, closely following the curves of the shores of 
South America and Africa, The average depth of 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 161 


this long, narrow ridge is below 1,600 fathoms, or 
about 10,000 feet. 

“ It is, then, unquestionably, an integral part of 
the Atlantic Ocean bed, with an original geological 
relation to the continental masses which it parallels. 
It is not a subsidence; if anything, it is rising. It 
does not and cannot represent any portion of a Lost 
Continent of Atlantis. 

“ I wish I had Donnelly here! I’d tie a good big 
chunk of lead around his feet and let him go down 
those ten thousand feet to have a look for himself! ” 

Bernard grinned at this fierceness, for Mont¬ 
gomery was known to be the softest-hearted man on 
board. 

“ A map showing the 2,000-fathom line,” the 
geologist continued, “ gives a very queer look to the 
North Atlantic Ocean. It divides it into two differ¬ 
ent seas, joined only by narrow channels at the 
Equator and in the Antarctic Ocean.” 

“ Are those seas the ‘ deeps,’ then? ” 

“ No. Deeps are isolated depressions, lower than 
3,000 fathoms, some very large and some quite small, 
scattered—without any apparent geological reason 
in some cases—over various parts of the two hemi¬ 
spheres. There are fifty-seven of them, sixteen of 
good size. Seven have each an area of more than 


162 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

half a million square miles, and two, the Challenger 
(including Nero) and the Aldrich Deeps, have given 
soundings of more than 5,000 fathoms/’ 

“ And how far down is the deepest spot of all, Mr. 
Montgomery? ” 

“ A nice little basin of 5,346 fathoms, or 32,076 
feet, my boy! ” 

“ Deeper than Mount Everest is high? ” 

“ By more than three thousand feet! And when 
you remember, Bernard, that six per cent, of the 
Ocean is in these Deeps, giving nearly one-seven¬ 
teenth of the water area of the globe a depth of 
more than 18,000 feet, you can easily see for your¬ 
self that there would be no great difficulty in tuck¬ 
ing all the dry land away. There are more than 
seven million square miles of ocean, deeper than 
Mont Blanc is high.” 

The boy whistled. 

“ And, even then, the highest mountain and the 
profoundest deep are nothing when compared with 
the Earth as a whole, less than the scratch of a 
needle on a polished globe of crystal, six feet in 
diameter.” 

“Erosion of all dry land wouldn’t really make 
much difference, then? ” 

“ Hardly any. If the mountains were put in the 


TALES OF A LOST WORLD 163 


deeps, and the rest of the land spread evenly over 
the sea bottom, the ocean would still average two 
miles deep. So, you see, we’d need fins, as I said.” 

“ But what’s the bottom really like?” queried 
Bernard. 

“ We’re going to take a look at it,” responded the 
geologist, gravely. 

“At the real bottom? ’Way, ’way down? Oh, 
when? ” asked the boy, excitedly. 

“ To-morrow! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


PIRATE GOLD 

“ You wanted to see the bottom of the ocean, eh? 
Well, there it is! Just as we saw it at daylight this 
morning! ” 

“ That’s just a sample of mud! ” cried Bernard, 
disappointed. 

“ It shows the ocean bottom just as surely as a 

* • 

piece of rich gold ore will show you a gold mine.” 

“ But mud, plain mud! ” 

“ Not so fast! What is mud? ” the geologist de¬ 
manded, as he stood by the elaborate sounding and 
testing apparatus which was being prepared for an¬ 
other deep-sea test. 

Bernard thought over this apparently simple ques¬ 
tion for a moment. 

“ Why, it’s—it’s dust that’s got wet.” 

“ I don’t think very much of that definition, my 
boy; try again.” 

“Well, mud—oh, I know: mud is soil carried 
down by rivers.” 

“ That’s a little better. But what is soil, then? ” 

“ Soil is—let me think! I suppose it’s what we 

164 


PIRATE GOLD 


165 


were talking about yesterday; it’s the dry land which 
has been eroded and has been carried into the sea.” 

“ So is sand. But surely you can see some dif¬ 
ference between sand and soil? ” 

“ Oh, yes; lots. Soil has in it the remains of 
leaves and plants, and all sorts of things; it s finer- 
grained, too.” 

“ And what is it that makes it so fine-grained? ” 

“ I know that, Mr. Montgomery. The half-rotted 
remains of plants in earth are good eating for earth¬ 
worms, and they munch their way through the soil, 
chewing it up fine.” 

“ I’m not sure that Mr. Bower would quite ap¬ 
prove of your phrase ‘ chewing it up,’ Bernard, but 
I see you have grasped a part of the idea, though 
you must remember that eroded material from some 
rocks—shales, for example—can be very fine. Of 
course, shales, themselves, are only dried and com¬ 
pressed mud. Now, you say that soil has ‘ all sorts 
of things ’ in it; what do you mean by that? ” 

“ Things which won’t dissolve or rot.” 

“ Such as? ” 

Bernard thought for a moment. 

“ Well, bones stay a long while in the soil, so do 
snail-shells and things of that kind.” 

“ Now you’re beginning to come to it! Mud, you 



166 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

say, comes down rivers, but when a river reaches the 
sea, does the current go on? ” 

“ Why, no; it stops.” 

“ And what happens to the mud? ” 

“ It forms a delta, as you were saying about the 
Mississippi, yesterday.” 

“ And the very fine mud, held in suspension by the 
water, where does that go to? ” 

“ A little way out to sea, I suppose, and settles 
there.” 

“ Very good. Now, this sample that I just showed 
you is not mud at all, but ooze.” 

“ What’s ‘ooze’?” 

“ I’ll explain that to you presently; it’s quite dif¬ 
ferent from mud. But you ought to see, Bernard, 
that we’re more than two thousand miles from the 
mouth of any river, here, and a great quantity of 
mud couldn’t be so finely divided as to float—with¬ 
out the aid of a river current—a distance of two 
thousand miles before settling down. 

“ But, since we’ve started on the question of mud, 
let us finish with it. You remember I told you, yes¬ 
terday, that the first division of the sea was the 
water of the Foreshore, that is, water overlying a 
bottom between high and low tide marks? ” 

“Yes, sure.” 


PIRATE GOLD 


167 


“ Now, that Foreshore bottom, being covered by 
the sea twice a day, must necessarily have a differ¬ 
ent character from the beach lying above the high 
tide mark, as you’ve probably noticed for yourself, 
time after time.” 

“ Of course. In some places the Foreshore—we 
used to call it the ‘ strand,’ at home—is of smooth 
sand, in other places it’s of rocks separated by 
patches of sand, the rocks being covered with sea¬ 
weed, while, near the mouths of rivers or on shore 
flats, it’s mighty apt to be mud.” 

“ Exactly. And, if you add shingle and boulders 
to the list, you’ll have the Foreshore deposits fairly 
completely. The differences on various beaches are 
due to the nature of the adjacent land, the strength 
of the tides and the shape of the coast-line. All such 
bottoms comprise more than two-thirds of mineral 
particles derived from the land; they are known as 
Terrigenous Deposits. 

“ The sand is generally quartz; pebbles are often 
of flint, chalk-covered; both sands and shingles con¬ 
tain a small proportion of broken or complete mol- 
luscan shells, of the chalky remains of nullipores, and 
of the sandy tubes of marine worms. 

“ Yet, as you know, Bernard, while you can find 
plenty of shells on the beach, generally they are 



168 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

empty. The molluscs which lived in them could 
not live on the Foreshore, exposed to the air twice 
daily; the empty shells have been washed up with 
the tides. You do find, though, in certain places, 
large quantities of the sandy tubes of annelid marine 
worms, such as Sabellaria, which actually do live on 
the Foreshore.” 

“ What’s Sabellaria f ” the boy interrupted. 

“ It’s a marine worm which makes a tube-house 
for itself. It belongs to the Phylum of the Appen- 
diculata. You told me the other day that you knew 
the animal world was divided into twenty-two 
‘ phyla ’ or main divisions. The Mollusca is one; 
the Appendiculata is another, and one of the larg¬ 
est. There were only five classes in the Mollusca, 
five letters of the zoological alphabet; there are 
nineteen classes or letters in the Appendiculata, in¬ 
cluding such different-looking creatures as rotifers, 
marine worms, earthworms, leeches, centipedes, 
bugs, flies, crabs, spiders, and scorpions.” 

“ But those can’t have the faintest resemblance to 
each other, even inside! ” 

“ Oh, yes, they have, every bit as much likeness 
as there is between an oyster and an octopus! This 
is the clue: the bodies of all of them are composed 
of a greater or lesser number of hollow rings, each 


PIRATE GOLD 


169 


ring possessing (typically) a pair of hollow lateral 
appendages, moved by its own muscles and with 
blood-spaces. 

“ Surely you can see how a worm and a leech re¬ 
semble each other, an ant and a wasp, a spider and 
a scorpion? Now, if you take a creature like the 
spider-crab, which is a true crustacean, you’ll cer¬ 
tainly think of a spider, right away; while the cater¬ 
pillar ^ a butterfly isn’t so unlike a centipede. It’s 
the same way with a good many of the rest of the 
forms. 

y 

“ But if you want to find out how each Class of 
the Appendiculata fits into the other, you’d better 
go and ask Bower. I’m not a zoologist, remember, 
I’m a geologist, and I only mentioned the marine 
worm Sabellaria because it makes great blocks of 
sand-tubes cemented with slime, which form a typ¬ 
ical organic deposit of the Foreshore.” 

“ You spoke of nullipores. Are they a kind of 
worm, too? ” 

“ Sakes alive, no! They’re seaweeds, but with 
the soft plant tissues so impregnated with calcium 
carbonate, or chalk—the same material of which 
oyster-shells are made—that they have become 
stony in texture. On coral-reefs, especially, there 

t * 



170 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

are numbers of these, but they are to be found, too, 
all along the shores of America. 

“ Now, as soon as you get below the line of low 
tide, Bernard, you find an entirely different kind of 
sea-bottom which is characteristic of the Continental 
Shelf, that is, which runs out to about the 100- 
fathom line. First of all, there may be a good deal 
of sand, coarse, near the shore, smaller, farther out. 
More important are the finer silts, muds, and clays; 
mud and clay differ from sand in that they consist 
mainly of alumina particles, while sand is mainly 
quartz. 

“ The heavier particles of silt, mud, or clay, drop 
upon the Foreshore, the lighter drop on the Con¬ 
tinental Shelf and form the Mud Line, about 100 
fathoms out. The finer particles, which are almost 
but not quite held in suspension by the water may 
drift far out over the Continental Step before they 
gradually fall and form an ever-decreasing propor¬ 
tion of the sea bottom. 

“ In addition to these fine mud particles, which 
may actually reach out as far as the 1,000-fathom 
line, there are still finer particles, carried still far¬ 
ther out to sea in what is known as a ‘ colloidal ’ 
state. They are so excessively small that their 
spherical area is proportionately very much larger 


PIRATE GOLD 


171 


than their bulk, and, consequently, they float until 
long exposure to salt water produces certain chemical 
changes ana they begin to sink. There are a good 
many other characters typical of colloids, but we 
don’t need to go into that, just now. 

“ That way, there is formed, about or just beyond 
the Continental Slope, a still finer terrigenous de¬ 
posit, only to be found in deeper waters. It may 
be colored blue or red by hydrated oxides of iron, 
and is known as Blue Mud or Red Mud. Another 
variety contains a mineral called glauconite, some¬ 
what mysteriously formed in the shells of certain 
one-celled animals called Foraminifera, about which 
I shall have something to tell you, later on, and 
this kind is called Green Mud. Volcanic muds, 
formed largely of pumice and ash, and Coral Muds, 
near coral formations, explain themselves. 

“ So, Bernard, seeing that we’re ’way out in the 
middle of the Atlantic, that sample I showed you 
couldn’t possibly have been mud.” 

“ No,” admitted the boy, thoughtfully, “ I see. It 
couldn’t.” 

“ But, before we go on to take a look at the real 
Ocean Bottom,” the geologist continued, “ we ought 
to cast another glance at the bottoms of these Mar¬ 
ginal Seas, for we’re not dealing with a dead inor- 


172 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

ganic world, but with a living one. Sabellaria or 
tube-worm, is one of the very few actually living 
on the Foreshore. 

“ But, on the floors of the shallow seas, below the 
tide-water mark, there live and grow an enormous 
number of animals and plants which are bottom- 
dwellers. Some are able to run about with a good 
deal of speed, such as crabs; some slither stealthily 
forward, like the octopi; some advance very sedately, 
such as star-fishes and sea-urchins; some painfully 
push themselves along with a single foot, like clams; 
some burrow with extreme rapidity, like tooth-shells 
or Scaphopods; some move only a few inches all 
their life long, like limpets; some are practically 
motionless, like oysters; and some are absolutely 
fixed, like sea-lilies. There is also a large variety of 
sea-plants. All these, together, are called bottom¬ 
dwelling or ‘ benthonic ’ organisms. 

“ While most of these are eaten by their fellows, 
a few of the short-lived ones die a natural death. 
But, so hard are the protective coverings of many 
of these creatures, that the predatory creatures who 
live on them do not try to swallow them whole. 
When an octopus catches a crab, he only breaks the 
under shell and rasps out the interior with his 
radula; when a star-fish, after several hours of pull- 


173 


PIRATE GOLD 

ing on each shell, forces an oyster to open, he only 
sucks out the oyster inside, he does not swallow the 
shell. So, in hard-shelled or otherwise protected or¬ 
ganisms, both those which die a natural death and 
those which are eaten leave their hard parts behind. 

“ The bottoms of the Marginal Seas, therefore, 
contain whole and fragmentary molluscan shells; the 
limy plates and spines of star-fishes, sea-urchins and 
sea-lilies; the chalky skeletons of plant-like animals, 
such as the polyzoa; the limy sand-tubes of marine 
worms; the skeletons of foraminifera, the spicules, 
or tiny spikes, of certain calcareous sponges; the 
carapaces or shells of crustaceans—from the big crab 
to the tiniest amphipod, as well as even the teeth 
and ear-bones of the larger swimmers, such as whales 
and sharks. Ear-bones, or otoliths, designed for vi¬ 
brating to sound-waves, are of a different substance 
than bone and very much harder. 

“ There are animal remains of a flinty or siliceous 
character, too, such as the skeletons of radiolaria— 
an important one-celled form which I’ll explain to 
you later, and which forms the fifth letter of the 
zoological alphabet, to which may be added the 
spicules of the glass sponges. There are also some 
chalky remains of plant life, such as the stems of 
nullipores and the calcareous parts of certain micro- 


174 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

scopic algae, and, to wind up with, siliceous plant re¬ 
mains in the form of frustules or frames of diatoms. 

“ In the shallowest parts of these shallow seas, 
such organic remains may be more or less smoth¬ 
ered by the quantities of sand or mud laid down at 
the same time; in the deeper parts, the proportion 
of Terrigenous Deposit diminishes, and that of or¬ 
ganic remains increases. Where the bottom is more 
than two-thirds organic remains, it is known as a 
Neritic Deposit.” 

“ That’s clear enough! ” declared Bernard. 

“ Yes, there’s nothing difficult, so far. Now, be¬ 
yond the Continental Slope, after the passing of the 
1,000-fathom line, the Terrigenous Deposits disap¬ 
pear. No muds are to be found on the floor of the 
real Ocean. Their place is taken by a very different 
matter called ‘ ooze/ of which there are four varie¬ 
ties, each of them of extraordinary interest. I’ll tell 
you about them a little later, while the deep-sea 
sounding is being taken. Right now, you’d better 
watch what’s going on.” 

This measuring of the depth of the ocean, and the 
bringing up of samples from the very floor, thou¬ 
sands of fathoms deep, never failed to interest Ber¬ 
nard. This particular occasion was to be of special 
importance, for, immediately after the taking of the 


PIRATE GOLD 


175 


deep-sea sounding, an effort was going to be made 
to tow a bottom trawl along the very floor of the 
ocean, to bring up from there the bottom-dwelling 
creatures who live in the eternal dark under a pres¬ 
sure of several tons to the square inch. So important 
was to be this test—for the ship was over the Nares 
Deep—that Professor McDree, the chief of the sci¬ 
entific staff, came up on deck personally to super¬ 
vise the manipulation of the instruments. 

“ Well, Bernard, has Montgomery promised to let 
you tie yourself to the deep-sea lead, and to go down 
and Took for the Lost Atlantis? ” he queried chaff- 
ingly. 

“ I haven’t asked, Professor ! After finding out 
how deep the sea is, right here, I decided to stay on 
deck.” 

“ You’d better, unless you want to end your ocean¬ 
ographical studies by suicide, as Aristotle did.” 

“ Aristotle, the Greek philosopher? ” 

“Why, yes; didn’t you ever hear how he died? 
He jumped into a whirlpool in despair of being able 
to understand the causes of the shifting currents in 
the Strait of Euripus; at least, so the legend runs.” 

“ Was he trying to find out how deep it was, 
too?” 

“ Not so far as I know. That doesn’t seem to 


176 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

have been of much importance to the early navi¬ 
gators, though a writer named Posidonius declared 
he had measured the depth of the sea in the neigh¬ 
borhood of Sardinia to 1,000 fathoms/’ 

“ Do you suppose he did? ” 

“ No, I don’t. He left no statement as to how he 
did it, and there wasn’t any kind of rope known in 
those times which would support its own weight for 
6,000 feet of length, in addition to a stone or a chunk 
of lead at the end of it. What’s more, how would 
a handful of boatmen on a cockle-shell of a Greek 
boat pull up the line again? Posidonius was prob¬ 
ably just guessing. 

“ The first real effort at deep-sea sounding was 
made by Magellan, when he was becalmed in the 
Pacific, during the first circumnavigation cruise that 
ever was made. He dropped a hand sounding-line, 
several hundred fathoms long, and, finding no bot¬ 
tom, wrote in his log that he had discovered the 
deepest part of the ocean. He hadn’t, of course, but 
he’d shown that the Pacific was not a shallow sea, as 
he had expected, but a true ocean. Captain Cook is 
said to have reached 500 fathoms. 

“ The first scientific deep-sea sounding was done 
on Lord Mulgrave’s expedition to the Arctic in 1773, 
when 683 fathoms was reached with a special grab- 


PIRATE GOLD 


177 


bing apparatus which brought up a large sample of 
Blue Mud. Sir John Ross, on his Baffin’s Bay voy¬ 
age in 1829, reached 1,050 fathoms, bringing up 
Green Mud. Sir James Clark Ross more than doub¬ 
led this, in 1840, attaining the depth of 2,425 fath¬ 
oms. 

“ The first effort to draw the contours of the ocean 
bottom was made by M. F. Maury of the U. S. 
Navy. By a very curious coincidence, on his re¬ 
turn voyage Maury crossed the Central Atlantic 
Ridge near the Equator, just at the very point where 
it is broken by a deep channel, and thus missed the 
realization that the southward extension of the Tele¬ 
graph Plateau—which he duly marked—runs all 
the length of the Atlantic. His soundings to 3,000 
fathoms were fairly accurate, but, beyond that, he 
guessed a good deal. 

“ Modern oceanography, in all its details, dates 
from the expedition of H. M. S. Challenger , which 
lasted from 1872 to 1876; this was the greatest ex¬ 
pedition of the kind that ever was or ever can be. 
All the oceans were surveyed, the depths to 4,000 
fathoms were accurately charted, the life of the sea 
at various levels was discovered and examined— 
proving, incidentally, that there was life at all 
depths—and the character of the ocean bottom set- 


178 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

tied for all time. The fifty huge volumes dealing 
with the results of this expedition—they took 
twenty years to produce—form the basis of all deep- 
sea study.” 

He paused for a moment, in response to a hail 
from the men at the sounding-machine. 

“ Everything in good order, Mr. Montgomery? 
Very well, you can let go! ” 

The small reel began to whir, and the thin but 
enormously strong steel wire ran out with a hum. 

The Professor turned back to the boy. 

“ Prior to Maury,” he resumed, “ all deep-sea 
sounding was done with a hand lead, let down by 
hand on a long line and pulled up the same way. 
Brooke, a midshipman of the U. S. Navy, sug¬ 
gested a system of having a ball of lead, like a large 
bullet, with a hole through it, through and below 
which projected a hollow sounding-tube. The 
weight of the lead would drive the end of this tube 
into the ocean floor, to take up a sample of the bot¬ 
tom. This bullet was attached to the main sound¬ 
ing-line by a short separate line on a spring catch, 
which catch was only held in place by the weight of 
the bullet. When the bullet touched bottom, there¬ 
fore, the sudden lightening of the weight released 
the spring catch and thereby detached the short 



PIRATE GOLD 179 

piece of line and the heavy lead, so that it was 
necessary only to haul up the sounding-tube.” 

“ What a good scheme! ” exclaimed Bernard. 

“ As a pioneer device, it worked very well,” the 
chief of the expedition agreed, “and it enabled 
Maury to make the valuable soundings which gave 
to the world its first map of the bottom of the ocean, 
known as a ‘ bathymetrical chart.’ American naval 
vessels, especially the U. S. S. Dolphin and the U. 
S. S. Arctic , then undertook systematic soundings in 
the North Atlantic; the Central Atlantic Ridge hav¬ 
ing been first clearly defined by the men aboard the 
Dolphin, it was long known as the Dolphin Ridge. 

“ During these early soundings occurred a very 
curious example of the grave mistakes into which 
really great men can fall. This was the supposed 
discovery of a marvellous form of life known as 
‘ Bathybius.’ That’s a real scientific mystery tale 
of the sea. ‘ Bathybius ’ was fully as interesting to 
men of science as a genuine green-haired mermaid 
with a shining silver tail would have been, perhaps 
more. This creature—which never existed, except 
in the imagination—was the basis of several learned 
books, and even Huxley and Sir Wyville Thomson 
(in his youth) wrote about it in most scholarly 
wise.” 



180 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ And this ‘ Bathybius ’—whatever it was—really 
was nothing but a humbug? ” 

“ Well, it was about as true as the story of the 
Lost Atlantis, as dressed up by Donnelly, and you 
know how true that is! Oh, ‘ Bathybius 5 is quite 
a queer tale; I’ll tell you about it. 

“ In 1857, the English vessel H. M. S. Cyclops 
was sent to run a line of soundings a little north of 
the Dolphin line. Naturally, the tube of bottom 
deposit secured at each deep-sea sounding was care¬ 
fully set aside, most of the water poured off, and 
the rest of the tube filled with alcohol to preserve 
any microscopic life or organic remains which might 
be found in the deposit. At the end of the cruise, 
these tubes were turned over to Huxley for examina¬ 
tion and analysis. 

“ To his amazement, Huxley found, under the 
microscope, in every tube, a grayish-blue material, 
which resembled organic matter. Struck by the 
significance of this discovery, Huxley suggested that 
this might be a primitive, protoplasmic slime cover¬ 
ing the whole of the ocean bottom, on which more 
highly organized creatures might live; he went far¬ 
ther, and tentatively brought forth the theory that 
this might be the earliest—or even the original— 
form of life. You’re too young to know about it, 


* 


PIRATE GOLD 


181 


but, when I was a boy, there was furious controversy 
as to how this primordial protoplasm originated. 
Church folk declared it must have been created, bi¬ 
ologists tried to prove that it had been evolved. 
But neither one side nor the other doubted the ex¬ 
istence of this protoplasm covering the bottom of 
the ocean. 

“ How could they? The German scientists, de¬ 
lighted to find in this protoplasmic slime a substance 
which solved a hundred puzzles of science, repeated 
the Cyclops soundings and checked Huxley’s micro¬ 
scopical examinations. They agreed! The Germans 
were not satisfied with this confirmation, they went 
farther—a great deal farther—they ‘ discovered ’ the 
typical organism of this so-called protoplasmic 
slime, and gave it the name of ‘ Bathybius/ or Deep- 
Life ; what was more, they drew most attractive pic¬ 
tures and diagrams of it as an amoeboid organism, 
and, in great detail, described its habits of moving 
and feeding.” 

“ And there actually was no such thing? ” 

“None! Not the remotest trace of such an or¬ 
ganism! On the Challenger Expedition, our friend 
‘ Bathybius ’ was set apart for very special study. 
Alas for his fame! He vanished like a ghost under 
a strong light. The chemist of the expedition found 



182 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

that when alcohol is added to salt water, sulphate of 
lime is precipitated in an amorphous (shapeless) 
form, which clings to shells or grains of matter, and 
which, under the microscope, closely resembles 
protoplasm. And that was the inglorious end of 
4 Bathybius/ ” 

He turned to the men at the instruments. 

44 Running out smoothly? ” 

44 No hitch, sir.” 

44 Good. Now,” he went on, turning again to 
Bernard, 44 we can take a look at the Challenger 
Expedition’s methods of sounding. The Challenger 
was a three-masted full-rigged sailing ship with an 
auxiliary engine, specially prepared for deep-sea 
work and with a scientific staff on board, of very 
unusual ability. Deep-sea sounding and deep-sea 
dredging was her work, but, so far as the scientists 
were concerned, the whole ocean was their province, 
for they were the first explorers in a new world. 

44 The sounding-line used on board the Challenger 
was of one-inch hemp, 6,000 fathoms long. For the 
deepest soundings a weight of 400 pounds was used, 
and, as the weight of the line itself, in sea water, 
at the deepest sounding was about 350 pounds, the 
total weight was a third of a ton. You can see, at 
once, how hard this would be to pull up by hand. 



Courtesy of Macmillctn Co. 

Sounding and Trawling on Board the Challenger. 

Note the India-rubber accumulator. (Photography was in its infancy 
when this all-important oceanographic cruise was made.) 



























Men Who Made Oceanography a Science. 





PIRATE GOLD 


183 


“ Now the breaking strain of this extremely care¬ 
fully made hemp line was about 1,300 pounds, which 
left very little margin for friction in the water or 
possible jerks. In order to give play, an accumu¬ 
lator was used. This was a cylinder, three feet long, 
composed of forty three-foot bars of India rubber, 
each three-quarters of an inch thick. The accumu¬ 
lator was fastened to one of the ship’s yards, and to 
it was hung the block through which the sounding- 
line passed. This india rubber accumulator could be 
stretched from its original three feet of length to 
seventeen feet length with safety, and thus it took 
off all shock from the line. Some improvements 
were made on Brooke’s device, but the Baillie sound¬ 
ing-machine, which was used on board the Chal¬ 
lenger , operated on the same principle. 

“ The next advance was made by Sir William 
Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and the Thomson sound¬ 
ing-machine was used by the U. S. S. Tuscarora and 
the U. S . S. Blake . Steel piano-wire was used in¬ 
stead of hemp line. In this machine, the wheel low¬ 
ering the line was braked by a second wheel on 
which counterbalance weights took the place of the 
elastic india rubber. The depth was measured by 
the number of revolutions of the wheel. The 
weight resembled closely the system of Midshipman 


184 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Brooke, but there was an additional device known 
as the Kelvin Sounder, which indicates the distance 
up an air-filled tube that water is forced by the 
pressure at the depth reached. 

“ The most modern deep-sea work has been done 
by a special steamer, the Michael Sars, built in 1900 
by the Norwegian Government to do research work 
in connection with fisheries. Nearly all her earlier 
cruises were taken in the North and the Norwegian 
Seas. But, in 1910, Sir John Murray, the great 
oceanographer, took the vessel for a summer trip in 
the Atlantic, and this cruise was reminiscent of the 
great Challenger Expedition, though on a very much 
smaller scale. The work of the Michael Sars Expe¬ 
dition was rather a study of deep-sea fauna than 
the making of soundings, and the Lucas sounding- 
machine, which had been developed by cable-laying 
ships, was used for depth measurements. This ma¬ 
chine, still further improved, has become a most ef¬ 
ficient device, and we are using the Lucas, on board, 
here. 

“ The use of steam, of course, affords a great sav¬ 
ing of time. Maury had difficulty in hauling by 
hand from deep water at a rate of six fathoms a 
minute, so that a sounding was an all-day job. The 
Challenger men, using steam, raised their hemp line 


PIRATE GOLD 


185 


at thirty fathoms a minute. By improved steam 
winches and with a wire line, the Blake, the Michael 
Sars and the Kittiwake have reached sixty. Thus 
we can drop a lead actually within one of the 
‘ deeps ’ and haul it up in less than two hours from 
start to finish. 

“ There is every reason to suppose that the next 
great oceanographic expedition, one which, if pos¬ 
sible, will be comparable to the great Challenger 
Expedition of 1872-1876, will be sent out by the 
United States. As you know, Bernard, a most im¬ 
portant Conference on Oceanography was held un¬ 
der the Secretary of the Navy in Washington on 
July 1, 1924, and it was amazing what a vast num¬ 
ber of unsolved oceanographical problems were pre¬ 
sented. 

“ The general idea, at that conference, was 
that the time is not yet ripe to spend millions of 
dollars on a world cruise, for men must be specially 
trained and many devices need to be perfected. I 
happen to know that this important oceanographic 
training will take the form of a four-months’ cruise 
—probably in the Gulf of Mexico—during the sum¬ 
mer of 1925, in preparation for a vast world expedi¬ 
tion in 1926 or 1927. This cruise of the Kittiwake, 
on which you’re lucky enough to find yourself, is a 



186 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

sort of preliminary canter to next year’s serious be¬ 
ginning.” 

“ Is that why you’re using wireless for getting 
echoes from the bottom of the ocean? ” 

“ You mean the Sonic Depth-Finder? That isn’t 
wireless, my boy! That works by sound waves, not 
by wireless waves, a very different thing.” 

“ But it’s the newest way of finding the depth of 
the ocean, isn’t it? ” 

“ And the quickest. The principle is very simple. 
An apparatus attached to the bottom of the ship 
makes a small, sharp explosion. The sound wave it 
sets up spreads out in a sphere. On reaching the 
sea bottom the sound is reflected and the echo is 
transmitted back to the surface, where it can be 
heard by an observer with a specially designed and 
very delicate receiving apparatus. Obviously, half 
the time between the explosion and the hearing of 
the echo is the length of time that it took for the 
sound to get to the bottom.” 

“ But do we know how quickly sound travels? ” 

“ Of course! Sound waves in sea water of average 
density travel at the rate of approximately 800 fath¬ 
oms a second, with slight differences according to the 
saltness and temperature. If, therefore, four seconds 
elapse between the explosion and the reception of 


PIRATE GOLD 


187 


the echo, that means that the sound wave has trav¬ 
elled 3,200 fathoms, and, since it has gone to the 
bottom and back again, the bottom at that point 
must be 1,600 fathoms.” 

“ And that simple scheme really works? ” 

“ Admirably! The U. S. Coast and Geodetic 
Survey Ship Guide has been experimenting for a 
year or more with the Sonic Depth-Finder, and has 
corrected its observations with the latest types of 
sounding-machines. The accuracy has been found 
to be extremely close. 

“ The best of the Sonic Depth-Finder is that 
soundings can be continuous, even when a ship is 
travelling at full speed, so that the entire bottom 
of the ocean can be mapped without any trouble. 
A vessel approaching a lee shore, in a fog, at the 
slow speed of fifteen knots, is running at a quarter 
of a mile a minute; if she can get soundings in two 
or even three seconds when she is still a mile away, 
or even half a mile away, there is plenty of time to 
turn, but if soundings must be made by a lead-line 
—taking four minutes, even under the best condi¬ 
tions, she’ll hit the rocks and be a total wreck. The 
device is being put on a good many merchant ships, 
so that the depth of every travelled corner of the 
sea will soon become known.” 


188 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ But the Depth-Finder doesn’t tell what the bot¬ 
tom is like.” 

“ No. And it won’t tell the temperature, or the 
salinity, or the chemical composition of the water, 
or a great many other necessary things. That’s why 
—as you saw just now—our deep-sea lead carries 
down with it four reversing thermometers, two pairs 
of different types to correct each other, as well as 
both Greene-Bigelow and Nansen-Pettersson col¬ 
lecting water-bottles. Improved thermometers are 
needed for the registration of temperature at dif¬ 
ferent levels, especially far down. 

“ If you had hitched yourself to that deep-sea 
lead, Bernard, my boy, you’d have been pretty cold 
by now. Deep water is cold water. In the tropics, 
the temperature at the surface may be as high as 
eighty degrees and it may be at twenty-nine degrees 
—or three degrees below freezing-point—a little dis¬ 
tance from the bottom.” 

“ Why doesn’t the sea freeze, down there, then, 
if it has a freezing temperature? ” 

“ Pressure prevents it, for one thing. For another, 
you must remember that, while fresh water freezes 
at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit (0.00 C.), salt 
water doesn’t freeze until twenty-eight degrees 
(-2.22 C.). The freezing point differs with the salt- 



Courtesy cf U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. 


“Heaving the Lead”—in a Modern Way. 

One man, with the aid of electricity, can sound a depth of 2,000 fathoms 
in a tenth of the time it took a crew of twenty men to do. of old. 






The bottom-dweller, Gastrostomies Bairdii. 



C ■* 


A new genus of Gastrostomus. 



The wide-spread Hariotta Raleighana. 



A new form of blind fish, Cetomimus. 



The eyeless Bathymicrops Regis. 

Courtesy of Macmillan Co. 

Fishes from the Very Profoundest Deeps. 








PIRATE GOLD 189 

ness or salinity, and this, too, needs to be measured 
with the most extreme exactness.” 

“ But does it really make much difference whether 
the sea is a little more or a little less salt, or is it 
just for the fun of finding out? ” 

“ It makes an enormous difference, my boy. Both 
the temperature and the salinity play a very large 
part—perhaps the main part—in determining the 
courses of the ocean currents. In their turn, the 
ocean currents determine the climate of continents, 
so, you see, whether there’s much or little salt in 
the sea is of prime importance to everybody, even 
to people living a thousand miles inland. 

“ The date of spring flowers in Norway has been 
found to correspond exactly with the greater or 
lesser saltness of the water off the shores of Cuba 
the year before; in other words, thanks to the Gulf 
Stream, the amount of pasture and the yield of 
butter, the time for seeding and therefore for har¬ 
vest, and many such apparently remote conditions 
in Europe may depend on what may seem like 
trifling variations in the sea, a hemisphere away. 

“ And there’s a good deal more salt in the water of 
the sea than you’d imagine, Bernard. If all the 
salts were evaporated out, they would make a glit¬ 
tering white block of salt as big as the United States 


190 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

and twice as thick through, thick enough, indeed, to 
be moulded to form all the mountain ranges twice 
over. You could, in fact, make two complete models 
of the whole United States, every peak and valley 
its natural size, and there would still be some salt 
left over/’ 

“ Oh, that’s impossible, Professor! ” 

“ It does sound that way, doesn’t it? But there 
are at least 4,800,000 cubic miles of salts in solution 
in the ocean, more than three-quarters being sodium 
chloride, or common salt, largely in the form of ions. 
But you don’t need to bother yourself with that, 
Bernard, for not even Chu Ting is likely to ask you 
to draw or to paint an ion! 

“ Now, while there are nearly five million cubic 
miles of salt, the area of the Continental United 
States is less than three million square miles, and 
I should be very much surprised if the average of 
the whole country were more than 4,000 feet 
above sea level! I think, after making the whole 
United States twice over, you’d have plenty of salt 
left.” 

“ That does seem to make it right,” agreed the 
boy thoughtfully, “ but-” 

He was interrupted by a hoarse shout. 

“ By the mark! ” cried the sailor who was watch- 



PIRATE GOLD 191 

ing the tally-wheel of the sounding machine, using 
the old leadsman's cry. 

One of the naval officers stepped forward and 
read off the dial. 

“ Three thousand, one hundred and ninety 
fathom, Professor McDree! ” 

“ We’re just over the edge of the Nares Deep, 
then! Very good, Lieutenant. Will you please 
send word to the operator of the Sonic Depth-Finder 
to make a sounding to check this one? ” 

“ Certainly, Professor.” 

Then, to the man at the winch: 

“ Wind in! ” 

Immediately began the steady clank of the steam 
winch hauling up the quadruple sounding-tube— 
for the weight had been automatically detached— 
the four deep-sea reversing thermometers, and the 
two specially constructed water-bottles for taking a 
sample of water from the very bottom of the ocean, 
while remaining closed both before and after. 

“ As I was saying, Bernard,” the chief of the ex¬ 
pedition continued, as the line was being hauled in, 
“ in Oceanography, all the various questions inter¬ 
lock. Depth is a prime factor in the distribution of 
marine plants and animals. Some organisms are 
benthonic, that is to say they live exclusively on 



192 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

the bottom; yet there are enormous differences be¬ 
tween those which live on the floors of sunlit shallow 
seas, those which crawl under deeper waters where 
there is eternal night, and those of the dismally cold 
abyss. 

“ The same is true, too, of nektonic or pelagic 
organisms, meaning those which swim freely in 
water, as also of the planktonic organisms, which 
means those that float or drift in the water with 
little or no powers of independent locomotion. 
Those whose lives are spent at the surface differ in 
many ways from those which live lower down and 
never come to the top, and these again are quite 
unlike the forms of the abyssal seas, in whom modi¬ 
fications of structure have occurred in order to en¬ 
able them to survive the terrific pressure, this being 
largely due to osmosis, as it is called, a phenomenon 
well known to physics by which liquids of differing 
densities traverse the walls of cells. Thus, the pres¬ 
sure inside each cell of a deep-dwelling fish becomes 
the same as the pressure outside upon it,” and he 
proceeded to give Bernard a score of examples, 
mainly of the strange forms of the lower levels. 

“ Temperature also plays a very large part,” he 
went on. “ Certain fishes and other organisms can 
live only where the water is warm; others, where it 



Plant deposit, showing the chalky stems of multipore, natural size. 



Courtesy of Port Erin Biological Station. 


Animal deposit, mainly the remains of Molluscs, Echinvoderms, and 

Polyzoa, natural size. 

What the Bottom of the Shallow Seas Looks Like. 






The Diatom Rliinzosolenia Sem- T he Diatom Chactoceras Decipiens, 
spina, magnified 20 times. magnified 120 times. 



Courtesy of Edward Arnold & Co. 


Mixed phyto-plankton, mainly diatoms, copepods, and larvae: the basic 
food for small fishes. Magnified 30 times. 

There may be a Million of Thkse in a Quart of Ska-Water. 


PIRATE GOLD 


193 


is very cold. A coral-reef fish wouldn’t last long 
near the edge of an ice-floe, and you’d never find 
cod in the Sargasso Sea. A very curious thing is that 
the young of cold-dwelling deep-sea fishes live all 
the days of their youth in the warmth and sunlight 
of the upper sea. 

“ The difference of even a fraction of a degree of 
saltness in the water has an important effect on sea 
life, especially on the organisms which form the food 
supply of the fish we eat. The movement of the 
great shoals of herring, for example, is largely a 
matter of currents bearing water of a greater or 
lesser salinity. 

“ Sunlight is an essential point to Diatoms and 
other plants in the sea, which are the food of young 
fish. Under favorable conditions, there may be as 
many as a million of them to a quart of sea 
water-” 

“ A million to a quart, Professor! ” 

" Fully that; 448,000 have actually been counted, 
in one case, and, in another, 200 were found in a 
single drop. Not estimated, you understand, but 
counted under the microscope, one by one! ” 

“ What work! ” 

“ But, under unfavorable conditions, there may be 
only a few thousand. Stretches of ocean—we don’t 



194 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

know why—suddenly seem to be lacking in micro¬ 
organisms, while, at other times, the surface of the 
sea gets thick like soup with them. But when 
there’s a scarcity of these microscopic forms, then it 
means real Famine, and the teeming sea becomes de¬ 
populated. Small fish die for lack of food, big fish 
die for lack of the small fish on which they must 
feed constantly, and the whole balance of life is 
disturbed. 

“ But there is an even more curious example of 
the effect of sunlight on the sea and the instant re¬ 
sponse of marine life. During the years of 4 sun¬ 
spots/ when the heat and light of the sun are slightly 
diminished, the surface of the sea becomes less 
heated, the ocean currents change their courses, 
marine plant life diminishes, fishes alter their migra¬ 
tion habits and fail to appear at their accustomed 
feeding grounds; this may impoverish or even ruin 
a fishing population and even affect the destinies 
of a whole nation, such as Norway, which depends 
largely upon the fishing industry.” 

He broke off, as the winch slowed down and 
stopped. 

“ Ah! Here comes the tube! We’ll see just what 
the bottom of the ocean, more than three miles be¬ 
low us, really looks like.” 


PIRATE GOLD 195 

Unscrewing one of the four short tubes, he tapped 
the contents into a little white glass bowl, for a 
first rough examination. 

“ Red clay, of course, as I supposed/’ he said, at 
the first glance. 

Then, smoothing the ooze out with his finger, he 
encountered something hard. 

“ What’s this? A meteoric spherule? Why, no, 
it’s flat! ” 

He rubbed the tiny object with his finger, so as 
to clear it of mud, took a small but exceedingly 
powerful magnifying lens from his pocket and ex¬ 
amined it carefully. 

“ Here, Mr. Montgomery,” he said, and there was 
a ring of excitement in his voice, “ you’re a mineral¬ 
ogist; take a look at this! ” 

The geologist cast a swift glance at the object, 
looked up at his chief with unmeasured surprise, and 
then bent to a closer examination. 

“ It’s gold! ” he announced. 

“ So I thought. Gold, and-” 

“ And copper, with perhaps tin. I’d need to put 
a translucent slice under a petrological microscope 
to determine the proportions. But it’s an alloy, 
certainly.” 

“ Then?” 



196 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ The remains of a coin, I should say.” 

“ What! ” cried Bernard, in high excitement. 
“ Gold from the bottom of the sea? Three miles 
down? A gold coin? Spanish treasure? From a 
sunken pirate ship? Oh, let me see! Could it be 
that? ” 

He fairly stuttered in his eagerness. 

“ Could it be sunken treasure? Why not? Any¬ 
thing is possible in the deep sea,” the Professor re¬ 
plied. “ But this is gold, certainly, and, very likely 
—pirate gold! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE DERELICT’S SECRET 

“Oh, Professor! Send down the trawl! Quick! 
Before we lose the spot! There may be a whole 
shipload of Spanish doubloons down there! ” 

“Eh! What do you want me to do? Bring up 
the whole pirate craft in the trawl, black flag and 
crossbones, and all? It would be a better idea to 
send you down there to look for the treasure chest.” 

“ If I only could! ” 

Bernard eyed the sea longingly. 

“ But three thousand fathoms! There’s no div¬ 
ing suit which could stand that, is there? ” 

“No, indeed; nor yet three hundred fathoms.” 

“ And I suppose a fellow couldn’t recognize the 
ship, anyway, even if he did get down there,” ad¬ 
mitted the boy thoughtfully. 

“Eh! Why not?” 

“ Wouldn’t it be all squashed flat as a pancake 
by the pressure? ” 

“ What would squash it? What kind of pressure? 
You’ve got your ideas mixed up, my boy! Con¬ 
sider a moment. Here, on board ship, we are under 

197 


198 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


the pressure of one atmosphere, which amounts to 
nearly fifteen pounds to the square inch, and we 
don’t notice it. At any given depth in the sea, there 
is the added weight of the water above; thus, as a 
cubic foot of sea-water weighs sixty-four pounds, the 
pressure increases by one atmosphere for each ten 
metres (thirty-three feet). At the deepest sound¬ 
ings which have yet been reached, this pressure is 
over six and a half tons to the square inch, or, 
roughly, nearly a thousand times as great as at the 
surface.” 

“ That’s just about what I was thinking, Pro¬ 
fessor, though I didn’t know the figures.” 

“ Of course, I saw that. But what you forgot to 
think of was that the water itself, at that depth, 
would be at the same pressure. Water is almost 
incompressible. It does not become greatly more 
dense, even at the extremest depth of the ocean. 
At the lowest soundings, a mass of iron will only 
weigh one per cent, lighter than at the surface. 

“ If you have fallen into the folly of believing the 
old fable that water gets a great deal denser as it 
gets deeper, so that there comes a point where every¬ 
thing floats and nothing ever reaches bottom, put 
the notion right out of your head. Even the light¬ 
est and most fairy-like sea-shell, once it commences 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 199 

to sink, will not be stopped because of the density 
of the water, but may go all the way down.” 

“ But I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that, while a 
cork floats, if you take it down deep enough, it will 
start to sink.” 

“And that is perfectly true, my boy, for, at a 
certain depth, the pressure of the water will force 
in all the air cavities of the cork, imploding it in¬ 
stead of exploding it, and the woody fibre, freed of 
all air and crushed flat like a coin, will sink, as any¬ 
thing else would do. 

“ As for your pirate ship, or any other ship which 
is lying at the bottom of the ocean—the Titanic 
for example—she is not squashed, but is lying at the 
bottom of the sea, but little changed. Anything 
hermetically sealed—such as the pirate captain’s 
half-emptied case-bottle of rum, or the steam- 
gauges and boilers of that unhappy steamer which 
foundered on an iceberg—have been imploded, but 
every place where the water could enter has re¬ 
mained intact, for the pressure has been equalized 
on both sides. 

“ Pressure does play some strange tricks, though. 
It doesn’t surprise us that one can be hurt or even 
killed by a fall from a height, but it would seem 
queer to think of being hurt by a violent fall up- 


200 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

wards. Yet this can easily happen to deep-sea 
fishes. In their own depths, the exchange of liquids 
through cell-walls equalizes the pressure, but if they 
accidentally get out of their accustomed depth and 
pressure, the expansion of the air in their swim- 
bladders renders them so buoyant that they con¬ 
tinue to tumble upwards to the surface, helpless, 
and are killed by the distention of their bodies and 
the disorganization of their tissues, due to dimin¬ 
ished pressure, the change of pressure occurring too 
rapidly for the slow process of osmosis to become 
effective. Really, they are killed by falling upwards. 

“ So, you see, Bernard, between you and the crea¬ 
tures of the abyssal deep there is an impassable gulf; 
you cannot go to them without drowning, nor they 
to you without bursting. We can do no more than 
bring up little tubefuls of deep-sea ooze-” 

“ And pieces of gold! ” interrupted Bernard. 

“ And pieces of gold—one piece, in the whole his¬ 
tory of Oceanography!—and from that we must try 
to get an idea of what the floor of the ocean looks 
like.” 

“ But I thought there wasn’t any Mud far out to 
sea? Where did that Red Clay come from, then, 
Professor McDree? ” 

“Red Clay isn’t Mud, my boy. As to what it 


/ 



THE DERELICT’S SECRET 201 


really is, you’d better ask Montgomery, whom I 
overheard telling you about deep-sea deposits just 
before this last sounding. There are four different 
kinds of ‘ oozes ’ in addition to the Red Clay. Once 
you get hold of the causes of the formation of these 
oozes—and they’re not difficult to understand, you’ll 
have a key to the whole ocean bottom.” 

He turned to the geologist. 

“ Make it simple for the boy, Mr. Montgomery; 
and let him come to me in half an hour or so; I’ve 
got some slides for him to mount.” 

“ Certainly, Professor McDree! Indeed, Bernard, 
there isn’t any need to go into detail,” the scientist 
began, as soon as the chief of the expedition had 
gone to his laboratory, “ but there’s not much use 
telling you what the floor of the ocean looks like 
unless I make it clear how it comes to be that way. 
The explanation happens to be amazingly interest¬ 
ing, and for you, with your pencil and color-brushes, 
most picturesque. 

“ You remember I told you how the organic re¬ 
mains on the floors of the shallow seas become less 
smothered in eroded material from the land accord¬ 
ing as you get farther out from shore? ” 

“ Yes, I remember.” 

“ And that the Blue and Green Muds, which are 


202 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

deposited from colloidal clay, are found still farther 
away from the land, out beyond the Continental 
Slope? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ And that, in addition to the remains of bottom¬ 
living animals, the sea floor also contains the re¬ 
mains of the free-swimming and the drifting crea¬ 
tures who have lived in the waters above? ” 

“ Why, yes, Mr. Montgomery, I get that all right. 
Naturally, if everything sinks down to the bottom, 
in the way Professor McDree said, those remains 
must settle down, too.” 

“ Good. If you thoroughly realize that, my boy, 
it’s half the battle. Now, let’s get a good look at 
the bottom-dwellers who make their homes in the 
deeper seas. A good many of the smaller forms eat 
nothing but plants, so we must begin with the plant 
world. 

“ Marine algae, whether microscopic or enormous 
in size, require a good deal of light, and even the 
deeper-dwelling types need some of the sun’s rays, 
however much dimmed by passing through water. 
Seaweeds thrive best on the stretch between the 
Foreshore and the 100-fathom line, on the Conti¬ 
nental Step, therefore. From that on, down, in the 
dim twilight zone where your friend the Giant Squid 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 203 


lives, the proportion of plant life grows less and less. 
At the verge of the photic or light zone, seaweeds 
grow few and stunted, and, just beyond it, they 
vanish utterly. 

“ In the lower part of this zone, then, there can 
be but few bottom-living plant-eating organisms, 
for there is not food enough to support a large num¬ 
ber. It follows, in consequence, that the bottom¬ 
living flesh-eating organisms—such as crabs and 
octopi, for instance—must become more scarce, since 
there is but little prey for them on which to feed.” 

“ Sure. That’s a case of the supply controlling 
the demand, instead of the other way.” 

“ In the greatest depths,” the geologist continued, 
“ there is no plant life at all, because of the utter 
darkness. It is true that all the principal groups of 
animal life are represented in the abyssal fauna, such 
as Crustacea, echinoderms, molluscs, worms and 
sponges. Still, the species which the deep-sea dredge 
brings up from those depths—when we are lucky 
enough to have a successful haul—are very different 
from those which dwell in the shallow water.” 

“ But if there’s nothing for them to eat, how do 
they live down there, at all? ” 

“ A good many of the smaller species—rhizopods 
and the like—eat the ooze, which contains a good 



204 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

deal of organic remains, and others live on them or 
on dead whales or other large fish, of which some 
shreds have escaped the voracious jaws, first of the 
surface fish, then of the middle-dwelling, and lastly 
of the bottom-fish, all the long way of the down¬ 
ward journey. For all of these, their food floats 
quietly down to them from their water-sky. You 
must remember, Bernard, putrefaction is very slow 
at the sea-bottom, especially in a temperature which 
may be below freezing point. Yet this is but a 
scanty food-supply, so, in deep-sea deposits, the re¬ 
mains of the bottom-dwellers appear in lessening 
proportions the farther you go down. 

“ In the deep sea, therefore, there is no terrigenous 
material, very little Mud and but scant remains of 
the bottom-dwellers. It follows that the floor of the 
deeper regions of the ocean must be principally made 
up of the remains of free-swimming or of drifting 
organisms, either plant or animal. Is that clear? ” 

“ Quite, Mr. Montgomery. But are there enough 
of them to form a real deposit? ” 

“ Enough? There are hundreds of billion times 
more than you’d ever guess! A net, no bigger than 

your hat, at a single scoop will catch from forty to 

* 

sixty millions! If I started telling you about all 
the pelagic and the planktonic organisms in the sea, 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 205 


you’d be standing there, listening all day. But I’m 
a geologist, not a biologist, and, just now, I’m only 
occupied with the types which go to make up the 
‘ oozes ’ of the ocean. 

“ Of these oozes there are five types, three of 
which are based on depth, only, and two of which 
are due to temperature. The three main divisions 
are: Pteropod Ooze, in lesser depths, Globigerina 
Ooze in the middle depths, and Red Clay in the 
deeps. The other two regional groups, largely based 
on temperature, are Diatom Ooze in the Antarctic 
Sea, and Radiolaria Ooze in the tropical Pacific and 
Indian Oceans. These names may seem a bit stiff, 
but you ought to try to remember them.” 

“That’s not so hard: ‘ Pteropod/ ‘Diatom,’ 
‘ Globigerina,’ ‘ Radiolaria ’ and ‘ Red Clay,’ ” the 
boy repeated. “ But I don’t see why they should be 
found at different levels! ” 

“Ah! That’s just the secret and the mystery of 
the whole affair! I’ll give you an example. Sup¬ 
pose a hill, rising from the bottom of the sea to 
within a hundred fathoms of the surface, not high 
enough, therefore, to form an island. Suppose that 
in the waters, above all the long slopes of this hill, 
all the various pelagic or planktonic organisms swim 
or float as usual. Then, in spite of the fact that the 


206 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


overhead life was uniform, you would find Pteropod 
Ooze on the crest of the hill and on the slopes as far 
down as 1,000 fathoms, you would find Diatom 
Ooze to 1,500 fathoms, Globigerina Ooze to 2,500 
fathoms, Radiolaria below that depth, and, below 
3,500 fathoms you would find nothing but Red Clay 
right down to the uttermost depth of 5,000 fathoms.” 

“ Now I’m clean lost! ” declared Bernard. “ You 
say that these different kinds of beasties were all 
swimming at the surface, above the submarine hill? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And that the remains of some of them are found 
in shallow waters and others only in deep water? 
Why? That doesn’t sound reasonable! Professor 
McDree told me that anything which sinks a little 
way in water will go all the way down. Why won’t 
Pteropods sink as far as the Red Clay? Why aren’t 
the lowest ones—Radiolaria, I think you called them 
—found near the top? ” 

“ That, my boy,” the geologist declared, “ is ex¬ 
actly the point to which I wanted to bring you. Let 
us take a closer look at each of these ‘ beasties,’ as 
you call them. Do you know what Pteropods are? ” 

“Rather!” affirmed Bernard, with confidence. 
“ They’re the winged snails. They’re molluscs, like 
limpets and oysters and nautilus and all the rest of 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 207 

that big bunch, molluscs which are able to swim be¬ 
cause their single foot has been modified into a sort 
of double skinny fin. Oh, I know a mollusc, now, 
when I see him! ” 

“ Do the Pteropods have shells? ” 

“ Of course! All molluscs have shells—except the 
octopus and a few forms like ‘ whale-food’ ( Clione ) 
—at least, so Mr. Bower told me” 

“ If Bower said so, you can depend on it. But are 
the shells of these Pteropods thin or thick? ” 

“ Mighty thin, I should think. After all, they’re 
not very big, and they’ve got to carry the shell 
around, while swimming.” 

“ Perfectly right. The shells are very thin and 
some of them are quite small, almost invisible to the 
naked eye. Many Pteropods live on the surface, or 
near it, and make their thin shells with great rapid¬ 
ity. It is quite important to notice that, although 
their shells are made of calcium carbonate (a form 
of chalk or lime) like those of the oyster, the actual 
compound is a calcareous mineral called ‘ aragonite,’ 
whereas the oyster’s shell is 1 calcite.’ 

“ There is a very large amount of calcium carbon¬ 
ate in the sea. Indeed, it is almost at a saturated 
solution, that is to say, sea-water cannot easily take 
up any more, at least in the form of calcite. But it 


208 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

is not saturated for aragonite. To give you an ex- 
ample of what I mean: you can make a saturated 
solution of sugar—a syrup—in which a lump of 
sugar could rest forever, and never dissolve, because 
the water has all the sugar it can hold. Yet a spoon¬ 
ful of salt, in that same syrup, could dissolve.” 

“Oh!” Bernard jumped at the idea. “You 
mean that Pteropod shells can dissolve in the sea? ” 

“ Not only can, but do. The dissolving process, 
however, is slow. During life, certain of the organic 
constitutents of the Pteropod prevent the dissolv¬ 
ing, but just as soon as a Pteropod dies, or is eaten, 
the shell is exposed to the solvent action of the 
water. Let us suppose that a thin aragonite Ptero¬ 
pod shell—as thin as a piece of tissue paper—takes 
five hours to dissolve, a thicker one, as thick as a 
visiting card, takes ten hours, while a still thicker 
one, like a post-card, takes fifteen hours. Let us far¬ 
ther suppose that these thin curved shells sink at 
the rate of a fathom a minute. Then, at the 300- 
fathom depth, the thinnest would have disappeared, 
at the 600-fathom depth the middling ones would 
have been dissolved, and at 900 fathoms, or there¬ 
about, every kind of Pteropod shell—even the thick¬ 
est—would have vanished.” 

“ Woof! I’d never have thought of that! ” 


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The Globigerina Bulloides. 



The Hastigerina Pelagica. 


Two of the Principal Foraminifera Whose Skeletons Maks 
Up the Greater Part of the Ooze Which Covers the 
Ocean Floor ; Magnified About 2,000 Times. 





























THE DERELICT’S SECRET 209 

“Yet it’s very important. That way, you see, 
Bernard, a dredge at 100 fathoms would bring up 
plenty of the thinnest shells, as well as the thicker 
ones; a dredge at 500 fathoms would have no thin 
ones and only a selection of the middle ones; a 
dredge at 750 fathoms would only have the thickest 
types; a dredging at 1,000 fathoms wouldn’t bring 
up any Pteropod shells at all. Now you can see why, 
on that submarine hill I was speaking of, the crest 
and the upper slopes would be covered with Ptero¬ 
pod Ooze.” 

“ But the other shells would be there, too? ” 

“ Of course they would. But Pteropods, being 
visible to the naked eye, are enormous in size when 
compared with microscopic organisms. One single 
Pteropod shell may be bigger than many millions 
of Globigerina or Radiolaria. Even if they were 
thousands of times fewer in the sea, still they would 
greatly outbulk the others. Of course, there are 
Heteropods and various other molluscan forms in 
this mixture, but the Pteropods are so predominant 
that they have given their name to this ooze.” 

“ That seems only fair! ” 

“ So I think. The same system of naming, too, 
has been used in the case of the Globigerina Ooze, 
for Globigerina bulloides is but one of the twenty 


210 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

pelagic foraminifera whose remains go to make up 
the sea bottom from 1,000 fathoms to the 2,500- 
fathom line. Various species of Orbulina and 
Hasterigena also are found in extraordinary num¬ 
bers. 

“ If you want to find out all about these micro¬ 
scopic creatures, some of which possess the most 
beautiful forms in the whole world of Nature, you’ll 
have to go to Bower. I’ll just tell you enough about 
them to give you an idea of their place in the bi¬ 
ological scale and of the part they play in making 
the bottom of the sea. 

“ The Zoological Alphabet is divided into two 
great divisions: the Protozoa, or one-celled animals; 
and the Metazoa, or many-celled animals. The first 
Division contains fourteen Classes, or letters; the 
latter sixty-seven, making eighty-one in all. The 
difference between these two divisions, put briefly, 
is that among the Protozoa, the cell is complete in 
itself in every way; among the Metazoa, the cells 
are differentiated to perform distinct functions and 
cannot maintain a separate existence apart from 
their fellows. 

“ There are four great groups, or ‘ phyla/ of 
Protozoa. These are: the Sarcodina, with a body of 
mere protoplasm, not entirely surrounded with shell, 


THE DERELICT S SECRET 211 


but often possessing shells into which a part or the 
whole of the body can be withdrawn. Their only 
means of movement, either for locomotion or for the 
capture of food, is the outflow of the protoplasmic 
body and a folding of it around the object to be 
seized, in the manner known as amoeboid. This is 
something like turning one’s stomach inside out 
around one’s dinner and digesting it in that way. 

“ The second phylum is known as the Masti- 
gophora, and is characterized by the presence of two 
or more whips or flagellse, which are delicate thread¬ 
like extensions of the protoplasm, with a property 
of contraction, enabling them to form whip-like lash¬ 
ing movements and to advance the cell in that way; 
the body protoplasm is sometimes naked, but is 
generally limited by a cuticle or shell. 

“ The third phylum is the Sporozoa, all species 
being parasitic in the bodies of animals; a great 
many of the disease germs belong to this group, mak¬ 
ing it a very important one. 

“ The fourth phylum is that of the Infusoria, in 
which forward movement or the capture of food is 
performed by means of the cilia, threadlike exten¬ 
sions of protoplasm, more like hairs than whips, and 
having a different kind of contraction power than 
that of the flagellae, hence the movements are some- 


212 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

what like the rowing of oars. The body is always 
limited by a cuticle. 

“ The latter three groups leave insignificant or 
easily dissolved remains. So you see, Bernard, only 
one of these phyla, that of the Sarcodina, is of any 
importance so far as the ocean floor is concerned. 

“ Let us carry on this same method of elimination 
in the seven Classes of this phylum. The first Class, 
that of the Proteomyxa—the first letter of the zoo¬ 
logical alphabet—contains organisms mainly para¬ 
sitic on plants; the second Class, the Rhizopoda, 
comprises fresh-water forms mainly, and the few 
bottom-living marine species form neither a cal¬ 
careous nor a siliceous shell; the Heliozoa, or sun- 
animalcules, though sometimes found in a living 
state on the sea-bottom, have no true shells but only 
a few fine and easily-dissolved spicules; the Lab- 
yrinthulidea have no shell of any kind; and the 
Mycetozoa, or spore-animals, have neither shell nor 
cuticle. Out of all the Protozoa, this leaves only two 
Classes with which you need to concern yourself. 
These are the Foraminifera—of which Globigerina 
is an Order; and the Radiolaria.” 

“ Whew! Pm glad there are only those two, Mr. 
Montgomery. I was beginning to get dizzy! ” 

“ Small wonder,” the geologist admitted. “ I ran 


THE DERELICT'S SECRET 213 

you through the list pretty quickly. But to know 
all the various species in all these classes and to 
understand their habits is quite another story. The 
Protozoa form a life-study by themselves, and a very 
complicated one. 

“ Let us leave all the other classes alone, and take 
a look at the Foraminifera. There are about seventy 
Orders, the names of which I won’t trouble to tell 
you, for you’d probably forget them promptly, if I 
did. But nearly all of them have shells. These take 
an infinite variety of shapes, like cartwheels, like 
roses, like round perforated balls, like carved 
lanterns, like lace-work baskets, like pine-cones, like 
cornucopias, like chains, like boats—shapes of a 
beauty and a delicacy in structure such as you’d 
never dream of! 

“ Most of the Foraminifera are bottom-dwellers 
but some thirty species are pelagic, mainly drifters, 
though a few may be able to make slight movements 
in the water. Their shells are of calcite, and there¬ 
fore less easily dissolved than the shells of Ptero- 
pods, but some of them are thin and excessively 
fragile, while others, despite their microscopic size, 
are exceedingly hard.” 

“ And I suppose, like the shells of Pteropods, the 
thinner ones dissolve as they go down? ” 


214 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Exactly. The deeper waters of the sea are less 
saturated with lime, and, in addition, there are other 
chemical solvents which act upon the slowly falling 
rain of shells, so that, at 1,000 fathoms, the Pteropod 
Ooze merges into an ooze containing a large number 
of Foraminifera; this again, still lower down, con¬ 
tains fewer and fewer of the thinner species and 
therefore a larger proportion of Globigerina bul- 
loides, one of the harder forms. 

“ Deeper down you come to Red Clay. This is 
usually red-brown in the Atlantic and chocolate- 
brown in the Pacific. Its origin is, mainly, the de¬ 
composition of volcanic and meteoric dust. It is the 
ultimate residue of the undissolvable material of 
the world, for there are few substances that water 
and time will not dissolve. Red Clay occurs in all 
oceans at a depth of 2,800 fathoms and below. 

“ Judging from the still uncovered deposits which 
are found there—such as the teeth of fossil sharks 
which have not existed since Tertiary times—it has 
been calculated that the Red Clay does not increase 
in thickness more rapidly than a tenth of an inch 
every million years. While an enormous quantity 
of excessively fine dust sifts down into the ocean, 
nearly all of it is dissolved as it slowly sinks through 
four or five miles of water. 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 215 


“ Geologically, my boy, it is quite important to 
notice that there is no terrestrial rock which in any 
way resembles Red Clay, and hence there is no evi¬ 
dence that the bottom of the ocean—I am not speak¬ 
ing of the Marginal Seas, mind!—has been above 
the surface of the water ever since the world came 
to be. 

“ Paleontologists are somewhat given to the habit 
of inventing convenient continents of aforetime, 
whenever and wherever they want to explain how 
certain fossil species come to be found in certain 
regions, but it’s a little dangerous to swallow these 
hypotheses whole; even Wegener’s modern notion 
that the two Americas split off from Europe-Africa 
and drifted west over the plastic layer underlying the 
rock-crust of the world needs to be received with 
caution. Shallow seas did recede in times past, 
there’s no doubt of that, land-bridges did once exist 
which are now beneath the sea; but when a paleon¬ 
tologist goes so far as to make the Nares Deep a 
part of the American continent, even in Jurassic 
times, he’s simply playing ducks and drakes with 
geology. 

“ But we’re getting away from the oozes, and your 
half-hour is nearly up. 

“ Radiolarian Ooze,” the geologist resumed, 


216 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ must be regarded as a geographical rather than as 
a purely depth deposit. It is a Red Clay containing 
a large proportion of the shells of Radiolaria. These 
are also one-celled animals or Protozoa, with fine 
perforate skeletons, through which the hair-like ex¬ 
tensions of the protoplasm pass. The skeletons, in¬ 
stead of being chalky like those of the Globigerina, 
are siliceous or flint-like and dissolve less easily than 
the chalky ones.” 

“ These flint-like skeletons are found lower down, 
then?” 

“ Exactly. Yet even these dissolve, and, when the 
surface waters contain only a small number of 
Radiolaria, but few of the flinty shells reach the 
greater depths. In tropical seas, where the Radio¬ 
laria are present in large numbers, the rain of shells 
is so great that the shells finally accumulate to make 
a Radiolaria Ooze at the sea bottom. 

“ Diatom Ooze is also a siliceous deposit, but it 
is of plant, not of animal life. It is formed of the 
frustules or skeletons of microscopic one-celled 
plants. Their sculptured forms are of rare beauty, 
being like globes, or drums, spindles, ribbons, or hairs, 
generally marked with geometrical patterns of great 
complexity—and yet so small that millions can be 
put in a teaspoon. Diatoms thrive in the cold seas, 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 217 


and Diatom Ooze forms a broad band encircling the 
Earth all around the Antarctic Continent. 

“ These five types of ooze, Bernard, are all the 
variety that the ocean bed affords, and each of them 
requires the microscope for the detection of its 
origin. No jungles or meadows of seaweed break 
the interminable wastes of the deep-sea floor; all is 
dark, cold and flat. Even the crawling bottom-life 
is scant. 

“ Surely, if Neptune has a palace in the sea, it 
will not be in the greater depths that he holds his 
court; not there do the tritons and the mermaids 
live, and escape our cleverest nets! No, surely it 
must be in some coral archipelago, close to the sur¬ 
face, some warm sea where the sunlight filters 
through, a vivid and tender green. The coral reefs 
are the gorgeously-colored gardens of the sea.” 

“ I’ve often wondered just how coral reefs were 
made,” the boy put in. “ I asked Mr. Bower the 
other day, but he threw up his hands and told me to 
ask you.” 

“ I’ll do the same,” answered the geologist, smil¬ 
ing, “ There are three contradictory theories on 
the subject, each one just as good as the other. The 
origin of coral reefs is an unsolved problem, and it 
is one of the things to be taken up by the U. 


218 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

S. Oceanographical Expedition of 1925. You 
ought to try to get an appointment on that.” 

“I’m wild for it! Chu Ting can’t possibly go 
next year, so he says, and Professor McDree has 
been hinting that I might have a chance if I stick 
to my color-drawing on this cruise, and learn com¬ 
parative anatomical drawing next winter.” 

“ Then I’ll give you a piece of advice. Don’t ever 
keep Professor McDree waiting, for he can rage like 
a volcano, when he gets impatient. As for the coral 
reefs, if you’re really interested I’ll tell you the vari¬ 
ous theories some day, but you needn’t worry your¬ 
self, now.” 

“ I’ll come and find out, just the same; I mightn’t 
have so good a chance again,” declared the boy, as he 
hurried off to the laboratory. 

For the next few days Bernard was busier than 
ever. Partly as a record of the expedition, partly 
for the boy’s scientific instruction, and partly to 
teach him how to handle some of these most ex¬ 
quisitely delicate forms of life, the Professor set him 
to make a microscopic color-drawing of every com¬ 
plete shell of every species of Foraminifera, Radio- 
laria, or Pteropod found in the various samples of 
the sea-bottom secured by the soundings of the Kit- 
tiwake. 


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Nets for Catching Sea Creatures Too Small to Be Seen 

with the Naked Eye. 



Courtesy of Port Erin Biological Station. 

Half a Million Tiny Crustaceans Are Brought Up by This 

Net at Each Haul. 




) 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 219 

Great was Bernard’s pride, one day, when, in a 
comparison with some of the color-drawings in the 
volumes of the Challenger Expedition, he was told 
that one of his sketches of an Eucoronis was almost 
as well done as the classical example, and very much 
more exact in tint. Chu Ting ruled the boy with a 
rod of iron, but the results amply justified the China¬ 
man’s rigid method. 

A few days later, coming on deck at sunrise, Ber¬ 
nard was astonished to find the ship’s bow pointing 
east. 

“ Why, I thought we were going north, Lieuten¬ 
ant! ” he exclaimed, addressing the young naval of¬ 
ficer who had read off the depth dial of the sounding 
machine, a few days before. 

“ So we are. At least, that’s where we’re bound, 
I’m told. But every ship can be called away from 
her course in a case of rescue.” 

“ Rescue! SOS, you mean? ” 

“ Yes. We’ve been receiving some queer wireless 
messages during the night.” 

“ How? What?” 

“ Well, the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca has been 
broadcasting the usual notifications about derelicts, 
and has reported one as drifting in the latitude 
where we are now, but a few degrees to the east. 


220 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

There’s nothing strange in that, of course, and, since 
it isn’t our business to blow up and destroy menaces 
to navigation—there’s a special vessel detailed to do 
that work—we didn’t pay any attention to it. 

“ But, during the night, our wireless operator got 
a rather jumbled report from the Trig, a sailing 
ship, saying that she’d passed a derelict a couple of 
days before, which was showing a light. She tacked 
back and tried to pick up the light again, but there 
was nothing to be seen. The captain added some¬ 
thing about the Phantom Ship, but his sending ap¬ 
paratus evidently wasn’t good for much, and our 
man could only get a word here and there.” 

“ A light! On a derelict! ” 

“ Yes. Queer story, isn’t it? ” 

“ You mean there might be somebody on board? ” 
“ Unless the skipper of the windjammer was 
dreaming, and his mention of the Phantom Ship 
looks a little that way. A man who’ll take the trou¬ 
ble to rig up an amateur sending station on a sail¬ 
ing ship might be apt to think anything. But it’s 
punishable with a whacking big fine to send out 
incorrect information of danger at sea, and this chap 
was quite willing to give his own name, that of his 
ship, and the names of owners, so it sounded straight 
enough.” 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 221 


“ What can it be? Do you think well really find 
a derelict? ” 

The officer shrugged his shoulders. 

“ They’re hard to pick up—except by running into 
them,” he added grimly. “ But we ought to be 
around the reported latitude and longitude by noon.” 

“ I’d like to be the first on board her! ” 

“ You might find a ‘new species’ derelict, eh?” 
commented the lieutenant, laughingly, as he turned 
away. 

Bernard was not the only one on board who was 
excited by the news. The Kittiwake had left the 
Sargasso Sea, but she had not yet reached that 
traffic-zone of the ocean known as the “ lane of At¬ 
lantic travel,” so that ships were still few and far 
between. A derelict, in those latitudes, might drift 
for a long time before being sighted by any passing 
craft. 

The naval vessel cruised slowly, all day long. 
Twice a false alarm was given that the wrecked 
vessel was in sight, but, on steaming nearer, the 
supposed derelict awash was found to be only a 
whale asleep on the surface of the sea. 

By evening, the search was no further advanced, 
and, at the “ Chin Club ” that evening, the captain 
of the Kittiwake was very much inclined to pooh- 



222 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

pooh the whole affair. He had enlivened the even¬ 
ing’s proceedings with several tales of derelicts, some 
gruesome and others humorous, and was just launch¬ 
ing out upon an old-time typhoon yarn when the 
Chief Officer came aft and asked permission to speak 
to him. 

“ This is a very curious thing, gentlemen,” said 
the captain, a moment later, turning to the assem¬ 
bled scientists. “ The operator at the Sonic Depth- 
Finder, who was instructed to take a sounding at 
two bells, reports that he hears under-water signals.” 

“ What kind of signals? ” 

“ Regular and irregular at the same time, like 
some one trying to beat out a tune, so he says. I’ve 
sent the Chief Officer to look into the matter.” 

“ Could that possibly be some one on the derelict, 
do you suppose?” the chief of the scientific staff 
queried. 

“ Anything is possible at sea, Professor McDree, 
and especially those things which seem the most 
improbable. The skipper of the sailing-ship was 
most emphatic about having seen a light.” 

“ But if there’s any one aboard the derelict, how’s 
he going to attract our attention? ” 

“ There’s the reported light, and there are those 
knocking signals! ” put in Montgomery. 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 223 


“ I’ve had the searchlight rigged up, too, and I’ve 
given orders to flash regularly in groups of three, 
with two minutes’ pause between,” the captain 
added. “ If there is some poor fellow on that drift¬ 
ing wreck, and if he has a light, he ought to re¬ 
spond.” 

But it was not until an hour later, that, almost 
simultaneously from the fo’c’sle head and from the 
foretop there came in two voices the same cry: 

“ Light on the starboard bow, sir! ” 

Bernard, who was on the bridge by special per¬ 
mission, turned his marine glasses in the direction 
indicated, and, sure enough, saw a light. But it 
did not resemble any light he had ever seen a &, sea 
before. 

“ It’s blue! ” he declared. “ And it’s right close 
on! ” 

“ It does look blue, for a fact,” the officer of the 
watch agreed, and rang the engine-room telegraph. 
The vessel slowed down and came almost to a stop. 

The searchlight, after a few moments’ quest, pres¬ 
ently fell direct on the black splotch of a floating 
hull, almost awash, on which could be seen the 
crouching figure of a man, apparently stooping over 
a lamp or a fire which gave out a bluish light. 

“ Man the Number Three boat! ” came the order. 


224 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Oh, please, may I go? ’’ pleaded Bernard. 

The officer smiled indulgently. 

“I don't see that you can run into any harm 
under Lieutenant Hamilton," he agreed. “ Yes, go 
ahead, if you want to." 

The boat was dropped over the side, Bernard 
aboard, much to the sailors’ delight, for, ever since 
the turtle escape in the Sargasso Sea, he was re¬ 
garded by the crew as something of a mascot. 

“ Why! The chap’s singing! ’’ cried the boy. 

And, almost at the same moment, recurred a tap¬ 
ping, as on iron, such as the operator of the Sonic 
Depth-Finder had heard from far. 

“That light is certainly blue!" declared the 
officer. “ Give way, men! ’’ 

The boat drew closer, though, from the lack of 
vigor in the strokes, it was not hard to guess that 
the members of the crew of the Number Three boat 
were superstitiously afraid of approaching the 
strange and phantom-like gleam and would have 
been well pleased to be back on board the Kittiwake. 

Yes, there was no doubt that the man was singing, 
but the strains sounded weird and out of place, just 
as the bluish light, scarcely visible under the fierce 
glare of the searchlight, had in it something un¬ 
earthly and unnatural. 


THE DERELICT’S SECRET 225 


Perhaps the queerest thing of all was that the man 
did not move. 

“ He must be blind! ” declared Bernard, reading 
the officer’s puzzled thought. 

“ Then why make a light? ” was the prompt re¬ 
tort. 

Coming closer, the lieutenant called out in a ring¬ 
ing hail: 

“ Derelict ahoy! ” 

There was no answer. 

“ In oars! ” 

The boat slid up to the derelict, and the bow man 
held her in place with a boat-hook. 

“ Brown and Johnson, follow me,” ordered the 
lieutenant, “ and keep a sharp eye on that fellow.” 

He turned to Bernard. 

“ You’d better stay where you are,” he cautioned. 
“ I can’t take you aboard. It isn’t safe.” 

“ Not safe? ” 

“ No,” said the lieutenant, listening to the strains 
of that wild song, “ the man’s raving mad! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 

The naval lieutenant stepped cautiously on board 
the derelict, closely followed by the two huskily built 
sailors. With a swift look around, he appraised the 
vessel's situation. 

The hulk, evidently the wreck of a cargo steamer, 

was almost flush with the sea, but seemed to have 

been floating in that state for some time. Derricks, 

masts, and funnels were gone. The bridge had been 

swept away. The deck cabins were shattered, but, 

with the butt of the mainmast as one foundation 

and the after cargo-winch as the other, a kind of 

rough shelter had been constructed, braced with iron 

bars and wound about with wire cable until it was 

as solid as if it had been riveted to the iron deck. 

% 

Nowhere could be better proof of a ship which was 
derelict, yet not abandoned. 

The lieutenant’s second glance was for the strange 
inhabitant of this fantastic dwelling. He was a man 
of middle age, thin and weather-worn, looking like a 
spectre in the white glare of the searchlight, but not 
emaciated, as might have been expected. His beard 

was long and bristling, his clothes beaten to rags. 

226 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 227 

Most mysterious of all, a long and heavy chain was 
clamped about his right ankle. 

What could this mean? The punishment of some 
mutineer? Or was it one of the few cases which 
still occur of piracy on the high seas? 

Certain it was that the derelict-dweller paid no 
heed either to the glare of the searchlight or to the 
presence of strangers. Either unconscious or indif¬ 
ferent to both, he continued to sing in a high-pitched 
screaming voice, at the same time beating on the 
iron deck of the derelict with a hammer. This 
sonorous hammering was undoubtedly the “ under¬ 
water signalling ” which the operator of the Sonic 
Depth-Finder had heard, many miles away, an ex¬ 
cellent illustration of the delicacy of the receiving 
instrument. 

In front of this survivor of some ocean disaster 
stood a large glass jar, firmly lashed to a rocking 
cam, which, in turn, had been fixed to the stanchions 
of the winch; in this jar floated a collection of 
strange sea-forms, such as the lieutenant had never 
seen before. 

From time to time, at pauses in his screeching 
song, the madman stopped to give this glass jar a 
rocking jerk. Immediately the whole jar glowed 
and sparkled with “ phosphorescent ” fire, so bril- 


228 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

liant that the luminescence was visible even in the 
full beams of the searchlight. 

The lieutenant advanced. 

“ Captain! ” he called, giving the title at random, 
in order to attract attention. 

The madman paid no heed. 

“ Captain! ” the officer repeated, and, with a sign 
of caution to his men, he laid a hand on the un¬ 
known’s shoulder. 

He had expected a sudden move, but he was not 
in the least prepared for what followed. 

Reaching back swiftly, the madman drew from 
inside his hiding-place an iron crowbar, and, rising 
to his feet with a bound, he commenced to thresh 
the deck with this formidable weapon, the iron ring¬ 
ing upon iron making a hideous clatter in the night. 
He did not seem to see the lieutenant at all and did 
not turn his weapon on him, but continued to beat 
at the deck in fury and evidently in terror, leaping 
actively from side to side despite the handicap of 
the attached chain, as though he really were in com¬ 
bat with some fearful foe, an octopus, or such. 

For a moment the lieutenant determined to tell 
the sailors to grapple the madman and to take the 
crowbar from him. Second thought suggested that 
such action might simply bring about more violence, 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 229 

and, after all, the poor fellow’s madness must be 
due to suffering. It might be both kinder and wiser 
to try the effects of suggestion. 

“ There, Captain! ” he said loudly. “ The beast’s 
gone! ” 

The madman seemed to have heard the words yet 
not to have realized that he heard them, for he 
stopped his tragic fight with the invisible, wiped the 
sweat off his forehead with the remains of a sleeve, 
thrust the crowbar back into the shelter and spoke 
for the first time. 

“ Ay, he’s gone! ” 

Whereupon he settled down into exactly the same 
crouching position as before, and recommenced to 
sing and to rock the luminescent jar. 

The lieutenant spoke to him again and again, but 
nothing that was said seemed to penetrate. Failing 
in this, he took the man by the shoulders and shook 
him vigorously. This time, touch seemed to be as 
paralyzed as hearing, or, more probably, the brain 
centres of both senses were numbed. Yet the fact 
that the sufferer had acted upon the former phrase 
showed that the brain could be reached by some 
words. A dozen further phrases failed to evoke re¬ 
sponse. 

“ Crew? ” he suggested, at last. 


230 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Gone! ” came the prompt answer, in a thick but 
perfectly intelligible voice. “ Gone, the swabs! De¬ 
serted the ship! ” 

“ Why? ” 

This question-word, not reawakening any picture, 
seemed not to be heard. 

“ Rescue? ” hazarded the lieutenant, thinking 
that this idea must have been long in the sufferer’s 
mind. 

“ That chance has petered out, long ago! ” 

It was evident that the survivor of the wreck was 
talking to himself, and that the words suggested did 
not reach him as though coming from the outside. 
The officer racked his brain to think of some word 
which would serve. 

“ I have it! ” he ejaculated. 

Then, turning to the crouching man, he said, 
sharply: 

“ Salvage! ” 

Slowly, the wreck-survivor turned his head. 

A troubled look came into the glaring eyes, and 
this very indecision proved that the reasoning power 
was not entirely extinct. It was not yet conscious¬ 
ness, but the dawn of it. He put up one hand to 
shade his eyes from the dazzle of the searchlight, 
which, before, he had not noticed at all. 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 231 

After some moments, he spoke: 

“ Ship? ” 

“ United States Navy Scout Cruiser Kittiwake ” 
the lieutenant answered, speaking slowly. 

“ Tow? Give a tow? ” 

“ Maybe. Come on board! ” 

“Eh! How much?” 

“ Come on board,” the lieutenant repeated. “ See 
the captain. Talk salvage.” 

Very slowly the words penetrated. The ship¬ 
wrecked man rose to his feet and commenced to walk 
across the deck. He was brought up suddenly and 
almost tripped by the heavy chain attached to his 
foot. 

The jerk and the clank of the chain unhappily 
switched back the dawning reason to its old grooves. 
The derelict-dweller slumped straightway to the 
deck and once more commenced to sing. 

Bernard, who had been able to follow a good deal 
of this conversation, for the lieutenant had been 
forced to shout the key words, realized that the mad¬ 
man was not dangerous, and he clambered on board 
the derelict. Forbidden or no, he was not going to 
lose such a chance of visiting a drifting hulk in mid¬ 
ocean, lit only by the white glare of the searchlight 
stabbing across the black night. 


232 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

The lieutenant cast him a disapproving glance 
for this disobedience, but, after all, the boy belonged 
to the scientific group, and was not under naval dis¬ 
cipline. 

“ Since you are aboard, youngster/' he said, “ you 
might take a look at that jar; that's more in your 
line than it is in mine. It seems to be full of sea 
fireflies; evidently that’s where the light came 
from.” 

Bernard needed no farther hint. The condition 
of the madman was exciting enough, but the origin 
of the weird blue light was a more thrilling mystery, 
still. 

A few steps took him to the jar. He gave it a 
little rocking shake. Instantly sparkles rose through 
the water; a second later, a globe began to gleam; 
and, quite suddenly, a cylinder of fire blazed out in 
a brilliant glow. 

4 

“ Glory! ” exclaimed Bernard, in sheer amaze¬ 
ment. “ This goes aboard, whatever happens! ” 

And he set himself to unlash the treasure from the 
winch. 

Meantime one of the sailors was quickly freeing 
the wreck-survivor’s foot from the chain, for it had 
not escaped the lieutenant’s notice that the shackle 
was close by the ankle. It was a screw shackle, quite 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 233 


easy to unloose, and the chain had apparently been 
fastened to the foot by the man himself. 

This chain unshackled, the lieutenant took the 
man by the arm, lifted him to his feet and led him 
to the boat—not without difficulty—explaining, as 
he went, that they would discuss towing and salvage 
on board the Kittiwake, for this was the only sub¬ 
ject to which the wandering mind would respond. 

No sooner had the boat reached the vessel than 
Bernard clambered on board, reached down for the 
glass jar which one of the sailors handed up to him, 
and rushed aft. 

“ Professor, Professor! This was the blue light! 
Look! ” 

The big jar, almost like a small aquarium in shape, 
glowed brightly, having been much shaken by the 
boy’s impetuous rush. 

“Eh! What? Bio-luminescent forms? Most in¬ 
teresting! ” 

The chief came forward eagerly. 

“ A Pyrosoma , of course, some Ceratium tripos, 
without a doubt, and a few Pelagia noctiluca —but 
hold on! Is that a Pelagia? Or-” 

The scientist flattened his nose against the jar 
to see more closely. 

“ Bring that into my laboratory, right away, Ber- 



234 HUNTERS OF OCEA^ST DEPTHS 

nard,” he said, and there was a marked note of 
urgency in his voice. 

The boy caught the tone. 

“ Is it a new species, sir? ” 

“ I’ll know better what to tell you about that, a 
little later.” 

Both hurried to the laboratory, the chief of the 
expedition summoning Bower as he went, and the 
two experts settled down to a long and exhaustive 
examination. Bernard, who had been up since be¬ 
fore sunrise, could not keep awake in spite of his 
best efforts, and he was bluntly ordered to go to bed 
without having learned the value of his find. 

Naturally, the boy’s first question, the following 
morning, as soon as Professor McDree entered the 
laboratory, was: 

“ Oh, Professor! Was there a new species in the 
glass jar? ” 

“ We think so,” was the cautious reply, “ in fact, 
we are almost sure.” 

“You promised, once-” the boy began hesi¬ 

tatingly, but his chief interrupted him. 

“ I know exactly what you’re going to say. I 
thought of that, last night, and, indeed, I mentioned 
it to Mr. Bower. But we felt we couldn’t very well 
call it after you. After all, you didn’t catch the 



THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 


235 


medusa. It was Captain Ropet of the derelict 
steamer who picked up the specimen, and, certainly, 
its blue light is more closely connected with his 
tragic story than with the chance fact that you 
happened to be in the boat which rescued him. 
Bower and I decided that, should it prove to be a 
new species, as seems most probable, we will call it 
Pelagia Ropeti” 

“ I suppose that’s only fair,” admitted Bernard, 
gulping down his disappointment. 

“ But you shall be the very first to make a sketch 
of it, at least,” the chief of the expedition said en¬ 
couragingly. “ Get out your colors and work as 
quickly as you can. I’ve had the water carefully 
changed every hour, all through the night, but the 
creature doesn’t seem to be any too happy, just the 
same! ” 

Bernard set to work with ardor, determined not 
to show his chagrin. 

“ Put your very best into it,” the chief advised, 
“ and, I’ll tell you what, Bernard: as this seems 
surely a new species, your sketch will probably be 
reproduced in a good many scientific journals, and 
there’s a chance for you! I’ll give you leave to sign 
your drawing—if it’s good enough—and, that way, 
your name will be associated with this luminescent 


236 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

jellyfish, almost as much as if it had been named 
after you.” 

“ Oh, thanks ever so much, Professor McDree! 
You bet Ill do my best! ” and he settled down to 
work. 

“ Jellyfish come in between Protozoa and Sponges 
in the zoological scale, don’t they? ” the boy queried, 
a few minutes later, washing in the very faint 
groundwork tints as he spoke. 

“ No, lad; they come after Sponges! They’re not 
on the same line of development, though. Sponges 
may be regarded, in a general sense, as colonies of 
one-celled animals, closely related to the Flagellata, 
or whip-forms. 

“ The Coelentera—which includes all the various 
kinds of jellyfish—have two different sets of cells 
possessing different functions, and arranged in two 
layers, to form the ectoderm or skin, and the endo- 
derm, or stomach lining. These two layers of skin 
go to make up a single individual, such as a jelly¬ 
fish or a sea-anemone; ‘ a sponge ’ is never an indi¬ 
vidual, but a colony of individual cells, each one 
profiting from the community action of his neigh¬ 
bors.” 

“ They’re on entirely different systems, then! ” 

“ Absolutely different. Sponge colonies,” the 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 237 


scientist went on, “remind one of the whip-celled 
Protozoa in a good many curious ways, and, in what 
might be called the baby stage, these cells swim 
around and get their food individually, just as the 
Flagellate Protozoa do. When they settle down in 
life and become fixed—there are no free-swimming 
adult sponges—the colony habit gets hold of them 
immediately. 

“ Often by simple budding, as well as by more 
advanced methods of reproduction, the sponge-cells 
grow and arrange themselves to form a cup or tube 
or hollow, open at the top and pierced with pores on 
the sides. The inside of this hollow is a very simple 
kind of stomach. 

“ By the lashing of the flagellse or whips, the 
water is drawn through the pores of the sides into 
the stomach hollow, where other cells digest the 
microscopic organic matter. The used-up water 
flows—or is ejected—from the opening of the 
stomach, which, therefore, is not a mouth. This 
arrangement shows a big advance on the Protozoa, 
where each cell has its skin and its stomach all in 
one. 

“ Many Sponges form skeletons—as the Protozoa 
do—either chalky, horny, flint-like or-” 

“ Excuse my interrupting, Professor/’ put in Ber- 



238 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

nard, “ but if Sponges make skeletons, why don’t we 
find them in the deep sea ooze? ” 

“We do! In Globigerina Ooze, for example, 
you’re apt to run across the giant spicule of 
Monoraphis, three feet long and as thick as a lead- 
pencil. Three-pronged spicules of deep-living forms 
are even found occasionally in Radiolaria Ooze, 
though sponges do not like extreme depths. There 
are any number of spicules in the Neritic Deposits 
of the Marginal Seas.” 

“ Those things like daggers, tridents, and cross¬ 
road sign-posts, which I came across once in a while 
when making those ooze drawings, were they sponge 
spicules? ” 

“ They were, and I’m pleased to see that you 
noticed them. But if we’d happened to dredge up 
one of the larger forms, like ‘ Neptune’s Cup ’ or 
‘ Venus Flower-Basket,’ you’d have had a thing of 
great beauty to draw. 

“ Some forms, of course, are quite irregular. The 
horny skeleton of the bath-sponge, for example—in 
which the stomach hollow takes the character of a 
series of intricate canals—may be most ragged in its 
general contour, yet the arrangement of the tiny 
sponge-cells which make up the colony is fascinat¬ 
ingly exact. 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 239 

“ Many sponges, too, in addition to their bizarre 
forms, possess the most startling colors: crimson, 
blue, rich purple, bright green, yellow and light red. 
There's plenty of work for your pencil and brush, 
Bernard, if ever any one should ask you to make 
color-drawings of the thousands of different kinds 
of sponges to be found in the sea. 

“ But, to go back to your first question, it's a 
serious mistake to regard the Sponges as leading up 
to the jellyfish, in the biological scale. Sponges 
don't lead anywhere! 

“ It looks as though Nature hadn't been able to 
make up her mind how to go about making many- 
celled animals, or Metazoa, from the one-celled 
animals, or Protozoa. So she tried two different 
ways: one, through the Sponges, which went no 
farther; and the other, through the Ccelentera, from 
which the whole line of development, up to the 
highest animals, can be traced." 

For a few moments, Bernard put no further ques¬ 
tions, for he was engaged on the copying of some 
very delicate bluish markings, only faintly to be 
seen on the transparent texture of the pulsating 
jellyfish, a task which demanded his utmost con¬ 
centration. A profound silence fell upon the labora¬ 
tory. 


240 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Some of these days, you’ll have to do quite a bit 
of work on the Coelentera,” the Professor continued, 
when he noticed that Bernard had pushed his sketch 
aside for a moment, waiting for the albumen paint 
to dry, “ for jellyfish, sea-anemones, ctenophores 
and their likes are always in demand for designs,” 

“ Do jellyfish and sea-anemones belong together, 
then? ” 

“ They’re in the same zoological branch. Mont¬ 
gomery gave you some idea of the fourteen Classes 
or Letters of the Protozoa, though, except for the 
Foraminifera and the Radiolaria, you didn’t do much 
more than skip over the rest. 

“ In the zoological alphabet, the Sponges come 
next, and they have only five Classes or Letters, very 
easy to remember: Calcarea, or sponges with a 
chalky skeleton; Myxospongida, those without a 
skeleton; Triaxonida, glassy sponges with spicules 
arranged on three (or six) axes, at right angles to 
each other like a cross-roads sign-post—though there 
are many variations; Tetraxonida, with four or eight 
axes; and Euceratosa with a horny fibrous skeleton, 
such as the bath-sponges.” 

“ Whew! The names are stiff enough! ” 

“ But their classification is easy, much easier than 
the Coelentera, though that division has only foil 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 241 

Classes or Letters. After them come ten Classes of 
worm-like forms, principally Planarians—simplest 

of all creeping things—tape-worms, thread-worms, 

» 

the transparent arrow-worms which you’ve seen in 
such quantities in our nets, and the ribbon-worms of 
the coral-reefs and sand, a procession of forms in 
which one can trace the gradual development of all 
the organs found in the Molluscs, which follow them 
directly in the zoological scale. The divisions of the 
Molluscs you know already. 

“ The Ccelentera—jellyfish and such—are the 
first big upward step from the one-celled animals to 
the Molluscs. Just a few words about them may 
help to give you an idea of their place in biology 
and their importance in the life of the sea. 

“ You remember I told you that a characteristic 
of the Ccelentera was their possession of a skin and 
a stomach-lining? ” 

“ Ectoderm and endoderm; yes, I remember.” 

“ Now, between those two, is a layer of jelly-like 
structureless substance, known as the ‘ mesoglcea.’ 
As the ectoderm and endoderm generally consist of 
a single layer of cells, it follows that, in a good 
many cases, this jelly-like mesoglcea forms the bulk 
of the organism.” 

“ As in the jellyfish, then? ” 


242 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Just so! You will find this mesoglcea more or 
less developed in every species of this vast zoological 
division. The simpler forms of Ccelentera come 
under the Class Hydromedusse, and this Class in¬ 
cludes the hydroids, which grow even in fresh water 
and which look so much like plants; the hydro- 
corallines, which have a stony skeleton and resemble 
corals; the jellyfish without a throat (stomodseum), 
of which there are several thousand species; and the 
siphonophores, or jellyfish with feeding-tubes, to 
which belongs the big and brightly-colored Physalia, 
or ‘ Portuguese man-of-war ’ so dreaded for its ter¬ 
rible stinging powers.” 

* 

“ But even ordinary jellyfish can sting like the 
mischief! ” 

“ All jellyfish—except the Ctenophores—sting to 
a greater or a lesser extent, some of them danger¬ 
ously. Even the hydroids, innocent-looking and 
plant-like as they are, have definite stinging-cells 
and can give a worse rash than nettles. The big 
jellyfish surely knew how to make themselves re¬ 
spected ! I’ve known one fatal case, where an Amer¬ 
ican sailor, diving deep, chanced to come up right 
under a big Scyphomedusa, and the tentacles, with 
their hundreds of stinging-cells, whipped across his 
face and eyes. He died next day! ” 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 243 


“ I’ll take care not to handle any tropical jelly¬ 
fish! ” declared the boy. 

“ But they’re as fascinating as they are irritating, 
and even more queer! They have the most aston¬ 
ishing habit of living two entirely different lives, in 
different kinds of bodies, a most amazing process 
which biologists call an ‘ alternation of generations.’ 

“ In a great many of the Coelentera, each species 
has two shapes. First of all, the hydroid grows like 
a seeming plant, attached to the sea-bottom, puts 
out polyps with tentacles—something like a sea- 
anemone—the whole polypal development looking 
not unlike a flower, and then these ‘ flowers ’ detach 
themselves from the plant-like parent, and swim 
away, full-fledged jellyfish or medusae. Then the 
medusa sends off free-swimming babies, which sink 
to the bottom, and turn into hydroids.” 

“ What? Jellyfish grow on a hydroid, like flow¬ 
ers, and then float off? I thought they came from 
eggs! ” 

“ So they do, my boy, so they do. So does the 
hydroid, for all its plant-like look. The egg turns 
into an oval larva which swims around by cilia, like 
a protozoon. This simple type quickly develops into 
a ‘ gastrula,’ in which form the skin and the stomach 
lining are already separated. Around the opening 


244 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

of the stomach (or blastophore) some tube-like out¬ 
growths appear, the beginnings of a ring of tentacles, 
and this stage is then called an 4 actinula.’ It looks 
rather like a pouch or bag, gathered at the neck with 
a string, but not quite closed. 

“ It is at this point that different species begin 
to behave in different ways. One kind of actinula 
sinks to the sea-floor, becomes fixed by the bottom 
of the pouch and the bag-like form lengthens up¬ 
ward into a tube or hollow stalk. Next, branchings 
put out in many directions, some of these branch¬ 
ings giving rise to the medusa-forms, as I just told 
you. Another kind of actinula continues to float in 
the water and expands horizontally until it looks 
like an umbrella upside down; when the tentacles 
are well grown, the whole form turns over and com¬ 
mences its life as a properly constructed jellyfish. 
Hydroids and medusae resemble each other a good 
deal, though one has the mouth uppermost and the 
other has the mouth down. 

“ And, if that wasn’t queer enough already,” the 
Professor went on, “ there are jellyfish that walk, 
actually walk! ” 

“ Walk? Like animals? But jellyfish don’t have 
legs! ” 

“ You’d think they had if you saw them travel! 



Hydroid colony, with Medusa or 
jellyfish almost ready to depart. 




Medusa (Synecoryne 
Pulchellci ) just after 
leaving colony to start 
an independent free- 
swimming life. 



The Walking Jellyfish 
(Clovatella Prolifera) using its 
tentacles as feet. 


The Medusa (Eladomena 
Radiatum) walking on the basal 
branches of its tentacles. 

Strange Forms of a Strange World—The World of 

Jellyfish. 























































The Lampromitra Huxleyi. 


I \\ v 

The Hexancistra Quadricuspis.\ 



The Clathrocanium Iieginae. 

Radiolaria, the Shells of Which Are Among the Most Wide¬ 
spread of the Deposits in the Deep Sea Ooze, Variously 
Magnified Between 1000 and 2000 Times. 
















THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 245 

Why, one of the ambulatory genera, Clavatella, has 
become so confirmed a walker that it has forgotten 
how to swim; the tentacles have become like six 
solid legs, each with two feet. Another genus, 
Cladonema, which rejoices in twelve tentacles, turns 
the outer ends of these tentacles high over its body 
but lets the first ‘ joint ’ of them—it isn’t a true 
joint, of course—drop downward, so that it can 
either swim freely or walk about on its knees, as you 
might say, just as it pleases. And these belong to 
the simplest of the jellyfish forms! 

“ The Hydrocorallines are colonies of hydroids on 
which the skeletons form stony masses. You may 
happen to know them better by the name of mille- 
pores. In this group, the hydroid gives rise to a tiny 
medusa which, apparently, only lives long enough 
as a jellyfish to start another hydroid. 

“ The Trachylinea have abandoned the hydroid 
phase entirely, and the jellyfish give off actinulse 
which develop directly into other jellyfish. 

“ The Narcomedusse possess fringes below the um¬ 
brella, and while these are of importance in biolog¬ 
ical development, you don’t need to take up the de¬ 
tails now. 

“ The Siphonophores are much more advanced in 
structure, having siphons for food-channels and pal- 



246 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

pons with a sense of touch. They form swimming 
colonies. The ‘ Portuguese man-of-war ’ and the 
‘ By-the-wind Sailor/ with their formidable stinging 
powers, are not single jellyfish but well-armed 
colonies, able to paralyze any small fish or crustacean 
that they touch with their stinging-cells, and, by the 
contractile power of their tentacles, to bring the 
numbed prey to the siphon-mouths. 

“ It is quite important, Bernard, to know that 
even the simplest medusae possess ‘ eyes ’ and ‘ ears/ 
These are not truly developed organs of that kind, 
obviously, but ‘ ocelli/ which are sensitive to light, 
and ‘ otocysts/ which serve the jellyfish for the 
sense of balance. The internal organs of our ears 
do the same, and seasickness—though it is partly 
produced by the sight and has its most annoying 
effect on the stomach—probably has its origin in the 
succession of shocks to the nervous system caused 
by involuntary disturbance of the sense of balance 
which is found in the inner ear.” 

“ Could you make a jellyfish seasick by disturbing 
its otoliths, then? ” 

Professor McDree smiled at the question. 

“ Pm sure no one has ever attempted to find out! 
It might be interesting to try. But, if you had the 
time, my boy, it would surely interest you to trace 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 247 


the development of the earliest eye and ear through 
all the various genera of the Coelenterates. That is, 
if you like the subject as well as I think you do. 

“ The Scyphomedusae, the second phylum and 
Class, greatly resemble the simpler jellyfish, and, 
at first, you might not notice the difference. For 
the development of your drawing, however, Bernard, 
you’ve got to learn the trick of noticing the simplest 
differences, and so I’ll point the main ones out to 
you, for a scientific draughtsman has got to know 
the way that science works, even though he isn’t a 
scientist himself. 

“ First of all, the umbrella has a lobed or indented 
margin; second, the mouth projects forward as 
though to make a throat; third, the reproductive 
cells originate in the stomach lining instead of the 
skin; fourth, and very important, the velum, which 
is a ring of muscles running circularly around the 
under edge of the hydromedusa, is absent in the 
scyphomedusa, the muscles in the latter Order run¬ 
ning longitudinally. 

“ The effect of this last change is that, when a 
hydromedusa wants to swim, he contracts the rim of 
his umbrella-body, forcing water out, so that he rises 
or advances—backwards, of course; when a scypho¬ 
medusa wants to swim, he contracts his longitudinal 


248 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

muscles, which narrows the umbrella, also forcing 
out water and moving astern in that way.” 

“ They can both get ahead, though! ” 

“Yes, but by a different muscular action. The 
Scyphomedusse, too, are much more advanced in 
structure. The pouch-like stomach modifies into 
canals which may radiate through the body, giving 
a firmer substance and a better nourishment. The 
simple ‘ ocelli 7 develop a vitreous substance which 
foreshadows the coming of the true eye; and the 
primitive form of reproduction which is known as 
‘ budding ’ disappears entirely. 

“ The third Phylum and Class of the Ccelenterates 
is known as the Anthozoa, It consists of the vari¬ 
ous coral-polyps and the sea-anemones. These 
forms show an advance over the higher jellyfish in 
that the throat is more sharply distinct from the 
radially folded stomach and that it is compressed 
into an oval or a slit. This gives rise to the most 
important structural change known as bilateral sym¬ 
metry, which you traced in the Molluscs and which 
prevails in all the higher animals. The digestive 
powers of a sea-anemone are stronger than those of 
a jellyfish, the mesogloea or ‘ jelly ’ possesses cells 
and becomes more flesh-like, and, in addition to the 
stinging-cells, a nervous system begins to appear.” 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 249 

“H’m! One really does begin to climb in the 
scale! ” 

“ Decidedly! The Anthozoa divide into two sub¬ 
classes, the Alcyonaria and the Zoantheria. In the 
first sub-class you will find the sea-fans ( Gorgonia ), 
the Pennatulids or sea-pens, looking like great col¬ 
ored feathers, two and three yards high, the pink 
1 dead-men’s fingers * (Alcyonium digitatum ), the 
sea-tree ( Paragorgia ) which grows taller than a man 
and has many branches, as well as the precious red 
coral used for jewelry, and the less-known blue coral. 

“ The Zoantheria differ mainly in the arrangement 
of the stomach, and the most important forms are 
the tube-like zoantherians, the sea-anemones—a 
strongly modified form, very stable, known to live 
for fifty years and more—and the madrepores or 
reef-building corals, divided into a number of groups 
by details too technical to interest you. 

“ Higher than the sea-anemones—though not so 
modified in some ways—come the Ctenophora. 
While some forms of this Class are exceedingly sim¬ 
ple at first sight, they show developments which link 
up in the zoological scale. They resemble jellyfish 
in outward appearance, most of them looking like 
a girdle or ribbon of jelly but they show bilateral 
symmetry, and they have eight rows of paddles 


250 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


formed of fused cilia; this, as you see, Bernard, is a 
considerable advance upon the pumping method of 
locomotion of the simple jellyfish. 

“ Even more striking is the fact that the sense- 
organs appear at the opposite ‘ end ’ from the mouth. 
There are also excretory organs there, giving us the 
first example of a creature with mouth, throat, 
stomach and excretory organs along the same axis, 
which is a very different arrangement from that of 
the hydro-medusa, which has to take in all its food 
and to eject all the undigested matter from the same 
opening. 

“ The real importance of the Ctenophores lies in 
two strange organisms belonging to that phylum and 
Class; of these Ctenoplana is the most important. 
In this creature, the line of mouth, stomach and 
sense-organs has been flattened so as to give a dorsal 
(aboral) surface on which lie the sense-organs, and 
a ventral (oral) surface, whereon lies the mouth and 
on which it is able to squirm along the mud. 

“ From Ctenoplana to the Planarians, or the most 
primitive of the Ccelomoccela (creatures possessing 
a well-developed body-cavity from the mouth to the 
organs of excretion) is a very short step. Yet it is 
the all-important step which leads from the pouch- 
stomached jellyfish to the higher animals; to take 


251 


THE GHOSTLY LIGHTS 

another aspect of this biological advance, it leads 
from the two-layered creature possessing a skin and 
a stomach-lining, with jelly between, to the three- 
layered animal possessing flesh, with all the amazing 
array of developments that arise therefrom. With 
Ctenophora, we bid good-bye to the jellyfish, and 

zoology takes on an entirely different character, in 

> 

which sea-forms play a much smaller part.” 

“ I've been wondering-” began Bernard, and 

then hesitated. 

“ Yes? ” 

“ You’ve told me about stinging-cells and all sorts 
of other things in jellyfish,” the boy said, “ and I’m 
ever so much obliged—but you haven’t said a word 
about their light-organs! And it’s because of its 
power of giving light that we first got hold of this 
thing which I’m drawing, this new species which 
you’ve called Pelagia ropeti. Just how is that blue 
light made? Don’t we know? ” 

“ The sea is full of ghostly lights! ” the chief of 
the expedition replied. “ Both in shallow waters and 
deep, strange luminosities gleam in the depths, and 
not from jellyfish alone. That’s one of the recently 
discovered marvels of science. 

“ But, before I start to tell you about them, we 
ought to go and see if the doctor will allow Captain 



252 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Ropet to talk. That was a most extraordinary col¬ 
lection of luminescent animals which you found in 
that glass jar on the derelict. How did that man, 
alone and abandoned on a drifting hulk, find these 
creatures? From what depth did he fish them up? 
How could he have managed it single-handed? 
There lies an unsolved mystery! ” 



JYoctiluca Scintillans, magnified Ceratium Tripos , magnified 

30 times. 30 times. 



Courtesy of Edward Arnold cfr Co. 


Some Ctenophore jellyfish ( Pleurobranchia ) about four times 

natural size. 

The Tiny Creatures, which by Their Own True Light-Powers, 
Set the Ocean Agleam with Fire on the Darkest Night. 



The blazing wonder, Pyrosoma Spinosum, which grows to twelve feet 

long, a cylinder of sea-lire 




Funiculina, with 
polyps expanded. 
Natural size. 




The liaining bright lilac 
Sea-Pen, Funiculina 
Quadrangularis, 
reduced to one-twelfth 
natural size. 


The Permatula 
Phosphorea, 
which flames 
with green and 
blue light. 


A Sea-Pen, Umbellula, 
from 4860 fathoms, the 
deepest luminescent life 
yet discovered, shining 
silver and violet. 


Some Brilliant Light-Givers of the Deep. 















CHAPTER X 


IN THE HOT RIVER 

The captain of the Kittiwake, in no wise con¬ 
cerned with the details of the mysterious blue light, 
once he had learned that it was produced by “ phos¬ 
phorescence,” gave all his attention to the fate of 
the derelict and of its half-mad commander. 

A large flag had been fastened to the stump of 
the broken mainmast, so that the Kittiwake could 
keep the derelict in sight without danger of ramming 
herself on it, and the little naval vessel stood by. 
Having found, from a perusal of the papers in the 
wreck-survivor’s pocket that the cargo was valuable 
and would repay salvage, the wireless operator had 
been ordered to send a message to Norfolk, Virginia, 
asking for a powerful sea-going tug. 

The ship’s surgeon, who had imperatively forbid¬ 
den any communication with his patient at the time 
the latter was helped aboard the Kittiwake, kept the 
exhausted man asleep for twenty hours. He only 
admitted Professor McDree to the sick-bay when at 
last the awakening came, and then only because the 
Professor was as renowned in experimental psychol¬ 
ogy as he was in biology, generally. 

253 


254 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

The brain of the captain of the derelict was still 
a long way from being restored to balance, but Pro¬ 
fessor McDree and the ship’s surgeon were agreed 
that a few weeks of nursing and of careful attention 
to auto-suggestion would bring about a cure. Un¬ 
der the Professor’s skilful handling, the main facts 
of the story were elicited without plunging the suf¬ 
ferer’s mind back into the channels of unhappy 
memory. 

The cause of the tragedy was simple enough in its 
details. The tail end of a typical West Indian hur¬ 
ricane, wheeling from the northwestward to the east¬ 
ward just off Cape Hatteras, had nipped the steamer 
White Prince on the inside of its roaring curve, just 

t 

where the pressure of the whirl drove before it a wall 
of water. 

This terrific billow—almost like a tidal wave— 
had caught the steamer on the quarter, had wrenched 
off the rudder and bent the propeller shaft with a 
single crash, the torsion of the shaft twisting the 
propeller off, after a few revolutions. As the crip¬ 
pled vessel turned helplessly before the hurricane, a 
second huge wave came over green and the tons of 
water smashed down the bridge and chart-house, the 
captain being pinned deep under the wreckage and 
the helmsman being instantly crushed. 


IN THE HOT RIVER . 255 


The White Prince was not very far from the lane 
of Atlantic travel, and the mate and chief engineer, 
believing that the captain had been washed over¬ 
board—for he was not to be seen under the debris 
and was unable to cry out—took to the boats. They 
put out sea-anchors and oil-bags, the first to keep 
them from being driven to less frequented parts of 
the ocean, and the second to mitigate the fury of 
the waves. The steamer, practically wrecked by 
those first two billows, drifted fast before the tem¬ 
pest and soon left the boats astern. 

The hurricane raged steadily, the driving seas 
crashing over the vessel, breaking in the hatches, 
flooding the companionways and cabins, breaking 
through into the hold, and, at last, bursting up the 
decks from below by the compression of air. 

The steamer, sunk in the water until she was 
nearly awash, was absolutely at the mercy of the 
waves, but the pounding seas fortunately shifted 
some of the wreckage which pinned the captain 
down, and enabled him to escape, though with a 
broken rib and some bone contusions. Unable to 
keep his footing, he had chained himself to the cargo 
winch until the storm should abate. 

When at last the sea calmed down, from visual 
observation of the stars the captain judged that he 


256 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

had drifted a long distance south and west, and 
therefore that he was out of the line of travel either 
of American coast steamers or of the transatlantic 
liners. Strange as it may seem in these days of 
steam, the ocean to-day has far more deserted spaces 
than when sailing-ships were the rulers of the sea, 
for “ liners ” keep to their lines, whereas the sailing- 
ships were compelled to reach their ports by tacking 
or by any slant of course that the vagaries of the 
wind would allow. 

The White Prince, bound from Rio Grande do 
Sul, Brazil, to Hoboken, was partly loaded with 
coffee, a light and valuable cargo, and this just kept 
her afloat. Moreover, as much of this coffee was in 
air-tight packages to retain the aroma, a good part 
of the cargo could be salvaged. Even if Captain 
Ropet had been able to escape, his duty to his com¬ 
mand and his loyalty to the owners would have made 
him stick to the ship. 

Deserted and abandoned on a hulk awash on a 
little-travelled stretch of sea, the outlook was des¬ 
perate. Salt water, of course, had penetrated every¬ 
where, but one of the fresh-water tanks was whole. 
Although this was under sea level, the captain had 
managed to wire two rubber tubes to the tap, one to 
suck the water out as through a straw, the other to 


IN THE HOT RIVER 257 

Jet the air in. This had taken several hours’ work— 
especially as the hurts of the injured man were so 
sore than he could move only with great pain—but 
thirst is a stern tyrant, and it meant either succeed 
or die! 

Owing to the weight of water in the cabin, he 
could not open the lazaret hatch to the provisions, 
but, in the ruins of the steward’s galley, he had 
found a small supply of various foods, including a 
bag of ships’-biscuit—unfortunately soaked with salt 
water. This was dangerous food, as the captain 
knew well, for the salts in sea-water provoke an 
intense thirst which leads to madness. Some dried 
peas which he found were better, for the salt could 
be soaked out of them in fresh water. Even so, this 
was barely enough to live on. 

The salt-meat barrels, even if he could have 
reached them, would not have helped him much, for 
he could not cook without fire, and, search as he 
would by diving into the cabin, or by more danger¬ 
ous dives into the fo’c’sle, he could not lay his hand 
on a single box of matches. This seemed absurd, 
but so it was. As for making fire by striking steel 
on steel—he had no flint—a couple of hundred use¬ 
less efforts convinced him that while this system 
might be of use in a forest, with dry tinder, it was 


258 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

useless as a means of setting fire to half-dry and salt- 
impregnated wood. 

Born in a fishing village on the Massachusetts 
coast, the captain’s mind had turned naturally to the 
idea of fish for food, for fresh fish may be eaten raw. 
But he had neither fishing-line nor fish-hooks, and 
the latter cannot be made from soft wire. As for 
line, he could find nothing but several rolls of the 
tarred marline used for whipping the wire ropes of 
mast-shrouds and the lower part of the derrick stays. 
This could, at least, be used for making a net, and 
patiently he had knotted it, mesh by mesh, using a 
ball of fine sail-twine for the pouch at the end of the 
net to hold smaller fish. 

Being made of such coarse line, the net was of 
great weight, too heavy to be pulled up by hand. 
But Captain Ropet had -sailed the seas for many 
years—he had got his master’s certificate on a wind¬ 
jammer, when sailors had to be sailors—and he was 
fertile of ideas. He disconnected all the steam con¬ 
nections of the winch, and, taking some twisted bits 
of iron bar from the debris, made shift to use it as a 
windlass. 

Since the thinnest of the wire cables was already 
wound on the winch, he attached the net to it, first 
having fastened a three-plaited sennet of marline 


IN THE HOT RIVER 


259 


through the doubled upper meshes of the net for a 
draw-string. To the mouth of the net he attached 
small bits of metal—such as the lock of a broken 
door—so that the net would sink mouth-downward. 

At the coming of darkness he let down the net, 
adjusting it to sink downward slowly just at the time 
of the upward vertical migration, when all kinds of 
sea creatures swim upwards, for, since the derelict 
was not moving—save for a faint wind-drift and 
the current—there could be no actual towing of the 
net. When the end of the cable was reached, a pull 
on the draw-string closed the mouth of the net, and 
then came ten weary hours of work at the windlass 
bringing the net to the surface. But, once raised, 
he found provisions enough for a week, and, by leav¬ 
ing the net in the sea, with the mouth out, the cap¬ 
tured fish remained alive. 

The luminescent forms had come up in different 
hauls in the fine-meshed pouch of this net, and Cap¬ 
tain Ropet had carefully collected them, large and 
small, for he did his fishing at night; and, without 
lantern or fire, the bluish gleam was not only of as¬ 
sistance, but was company as well. Indeed he had 
come to attach a superstitious importance to it. 

All this had happened more than two months ago! 
For sixty-four days Captain Ropet had lived on raw 


260 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

fish, ships'-biscuit, dried peas, and gulf-weed, which 
latter, he admitted, had neither taste nor nourish¬ 
ment, but which, he hoped, might keep scurvy away. 
Professor McDree was unable to find out at what 
date in this long period of suffering the derelict- 
dweller had abandoned all hope of rescue, but it was 
evident that he could not have endured much longer; 
the attachment of the rubber tubes to the water- 
tank could not be made absolutely tight, the sea¬ 
water had seeped in gradually, making the drinking- 
water brackish. This it was, among other things, 
which was beginning to affect his brain. 

It appeared, from some of Captain Ropet’s con¬ 
fused answers, that the capture of these luminous 
creatures had become the chief aim of his solitary 
life. Almost it seemed as though he had some un¬ 
conscious prevision that they would prove to be the 
means of saving his life. That this was so, there 
was no doubt, for it was the wireless message from 
the sailing ship Trig declaring that a light had been 
seen on the derelict, which had sent the Kittiwake 
to the rescue. 

Indeed, it seemed probable that the exhausted 
and disheartened man would have abandoned the 
labor of raising the great net—which, after the last 
biscuit was gone, had become his sole source of food 


261 


IN THE HOT RIVER 

—had it not been for this superstitious feeling that, 
as long as he had light, he was not alone. 

“ There’s not much doubt in my mind, Bernard,” 
the Professor concluded, after he had summarized 
to the boy the outcome of his scrappy conversation 
with the derelict-dweller, “ that these luminescent 
creatures of the sea have saved Captain Ropet’s rea¬ 
son, as well as his life, and I think you’ll agree with 
me that we’ve been right in naming the new species 
after him.” 

“ I should say so! But he must often have won¬ 
dered, Professor, on those long nights alone, how it 
happened that things like jellyfish and prawns can 
shine with a light of their own.” 

“ He doesn’t seem to have wondered at all. He’s 
a religious man, and seems to think that these ‘ sea- 
angels,’ as he calls them, were sent specially to cheer 
him up. He spoke of them as ‘ the pillar of fire by 
night ’ which would lead him to safety, if only he 
had faith. Well, frankly, they did! 

“ I saw no reason for disabusing his mind of so 
kindly a belief, especially in his present state. More¬ 
over, when he gets better, I’d rather that no one 
should talk science to him about them. I’m going to 
drop a word to that effect at the ‘ Chin Club ’ to¬ 
night. Faith—in no matter what—is too easy to 


262 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

break and too difficult to replace. In any case that 
he should have found that glass aquarium unbroken 
and that it should have remained so is miracle 
enough! 

“ But that wasn’t what was in your mind, my boy. 
What you really meant to say was that you are do¬ 
ing the wondering about these ‘ shining ones,’ eh? ” 

“ Well, yes! I asked Mr. Bower about it, and 
though he seemed to know a lot about them, espe¬ 
cially among the invertebrates, he referred me to 
you, saying you were the world’s authority on bio¬ 
luminescence.” 

“ There’s an example of Bower’s love of big 
phrases! ” came the disapproving answer. “ I have 
published several papers on the subject, though. 
Suppose I give them to you to read? ” 

“ When you tell me, yourself, Professor McDree, 
you make things so much more simple! Just what 
is it that makes some creatures phosphorescent, and 
others not? ” 

“ Luminescent, you mean, for there’s no question 
of phosphorus. I’ll answer your question just as you 
put it, though I don’t think you’ve asked what you 
want to know. Bio-luminescence comes from two 
essential substances, luciferine and luciferase, which 
produce light when brought into contact with cer- 


263 


IN THE HOT RIVER 

tain salts in sea-water; certain creatures excrete 
these substances and others don't. That's the chem¬ 
ical side of it." 

“ No, I didn’t mean that. What I wanted to ask 
was why some forms are luminescent, while others 
aren't. What use is the light to them? Is it to 
light up the bottom of the sea, down where the rays 
of the sun don't penetrate? ” 

“ Like a deep-sea Broadway? No, my boy, it cer¬ 
tainly is not! In truth, though it is only lately 
that the fact has become generally known, the larg¬ 
est and most powerful light-organs—among fishes, 
at least—are not found in the deepest-dwelling 
forms. Among the light-bearing Cyclothones, for 
example, the size of the photophore decreases—not 
increases—with the depth; in another genus— 
Gonostoma—the species of the surface is much bet¬ 
ter endowed with light organs than his cousin of the 
depths; and Gastrostomies bairdii, the most char¬ 
acteristic of all abyssal fishes, has no light-organs at 
all, except, perhaps, for an undetermined spot at the 
tip of the tail. It is in the upper 500 fathoms of 
tropical waters that luminescence appears most 
strongly.” 

“But I didn’t mean fishes, only, Professor. I 
meant all sorts of light-producing forms, like this 


264 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

new species of medusa, for example. What can a 
jellyfish use a lantern for? ” 

“ Oh, if you want to begin at the very beginning, 
you’ll find the question all the harder to understand, 
my boy, for luminescence doesn’t always exist for 
the same reason nor serve the same purpose. The 
same holds true on land. As you may know, there 
are luminous centipedes as well as the two species 
of luminous beetles known as ‘ fireflies ’ and ‘ glow¬ 
worms ’; but, while the flashings of the male firefly 
and that of the female glowworm are of assist¬ 
ance to mating, in their respective species, the gleam 
of the centipede seems to have nothing to do with 
this function. 

“ Perhaps the simplest of all the luminous crea¬ 
tures of sea and shore are the microscopic plants 
known as bacteria, two forms of which ( Photobac¬ 
terium and Microspira ) are well known for the light 
which they produce on dead fish.” 

“ I thought that was phosphorus produced by rot¬ 
ting! ” 

“ It isn’t. When a fish really begins to putrefy, 
the photobacteria can no longer live, and the light 
goes out, for the diseased and the forms just dead are 
the favorite habitat of these bacteria. Have you 
ever noticed, when walking on a sandy beach at 


IN THE HOT RIVER 


265 


night, that, just within the range of the wet sand 
surrounding the print of your foot, little luminous 
‘ sand-hoppers ’ would jump away? ” 

“ Oh, yes! I’ve seen that often! Shining little 
chaps they were, too! ” 

“ Those tiny Crustacea weren’t bright in them¬ 
selves at all. They were all diseased with a form of 
photobacterium, which kills very slowly. The light 
you saw came from a microscopic parasitic one-celled 
plant, and if you’d examined this cell under the 
microscope, you’d have seen that the whole surface 
was covered with a thin slime, and that it was this 
slime which was luminous, and not the dying amphi- 
pods. 

“ The ‘ milky sea,’ so often seen in tropical waters, 
is also due to the masses of a one-celled plant, Pyro - 
cystis, though a closely similar effect has been traced 
to a group of one-celled animals called Flagel- 
lata-” 

“ I know about those! ” put in Bernard, glad to 
show his knowledge. “ They have long things like 
whips to push themselves through the water with.” 

“ Quite right. The little creature which, some¬ 
times, in shoals of unnumbered billions, turns the 
sea red by day and luminous by night, is a small 
Peridinium. The three-horned dinoflagellate Cera - 



266 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

tium tripos gives the bright sparkles to the sea, and 
the silvery sheen seen around the bows of a boat or 
ship is a very abundant form of a distant relative 
of the same Class, known as Noctiluca scintillans. 
This last form has been found in such quantities 
that infested water near shore was of the color and 
thickness of tomato soup, while a drop of it con¬ 
tained so many Noctiluca as to be beyond the pos¬ 
sibility of microscopic counting. Though not al¬ 
ways in such quantities, they are always to be found 
in the sea, and some of the sparkles in Captain 
Ropet’s jar were flashes from this protozoon. Sev¬ 
eral species of Radiolaria, also, are luminescent. 

“ Leaving the Protozoa, and coming to the Ccelen- 
terates, of which I was talking to you yesterday, 
there are a score or two of forms which give off light. 
A great many of the hydroid polyps show tiny 
gleaming lamps. As for the Medusae, or jellyfish, at 
times they can produce the most startling effects. 

“ Once, when Sir William Herdman, the famous 
oceanographer was at anchor in a native boat on the 
pearl banks of the Gulf of Manaar, in an intensely 
dark night, he saw the sea in every direction lit up 
by uncounted thousands of globes of fire, waxing 
and waning in brightness, all simultaneously glow¬ 
ing and then fading away into darkness, and after a 


IN THE HOT RIVER 267 

few seconds lighting up once more. The display 
lasted for over an hour. The effect was as if one 
of the globes lit up and then another and another 
in rapid succession, suggesting that the luminescence 
of one was stimulating the others to similar action. 

“ The most brilliant light-producing Medusa in 
the North Atlantic is Pelagia noctiluca, perhaps 
even brighter than the new species Pelagia ropeti, 
though, it’s true, we don’t know how long the speci¬ 
men you brought on board had been in the glass jar 
aboard the derelict. I’ve seen them, when first taken 
out of the sea, every bit as bright as a ball of in¬ 
candescent metal, and it was difficult to believe that 
they would not burn the fingers, if touched. Some 
of the Ctenophore jellyfish (such as Pleurobrachia 
pileus) which are as big as full-grown grains of corn, 
may dot the sea with points of emerald green light, 
extending for miles.” 

“ Were there any of those in the jar? ” 

“ I didn’t see any. Of course, being out in deep 
water, Captain Ropet had no chance to get any of 
the littoral-dwelling Anthozoa. The sea-pen, Pen- 
natula phosphorea, is one of the most beautiful sights 
in nature, when at the slightest irritating touch 
every branch and polyp springs into an illumination 
display, each being outlined with light like a series 


268 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


of fairy lamps, hyacinth in color. The giant sea-pen 
(Funiculina quadrangular is) is even more astound¬ 
ing. Imagine a waving feather, six feet high, which, 
when touched, sends great waves of vivid lilac light 
pulsing up and down its stem, as brilliant as the 
flame of cyanogen gas. 

“ Some of the Alcyonarian corals fall but little 
short of this luminous glory. If one should touch 
Renilla, at night, waves of golden-green travel over 
the entire surface of the reef like wind over a field 
of ripe corn. It is quite important to observe that 
Renilla cannot be stimulated to action in the day¬ 
time, even in a darkened room, showing that the 
illumination must be under nerve control, whereas, 
in all lower forms, the light is evidently a response 
to mechanical stimulation only. 

“ A good many of the Annelid worms are lumi¬ 
nescent, and, among Polynoids, the light-secretion 
is on detachable scales which glow after being thrown 
off from the body, being possibly a ‘ sacrifice lure/ 
intended to set a crab or other enemy chasing the 
scales while the worm escapes. Among the Syllid 
worms, the light is definitely a recognition mark, and 
enables the male to find his mate on the surface of 
the sea during the periodic swarming; a mystery 
as yet unsolved among the Syllids is why the 


IN THE HOT RIVER 269 

light is sometimes violet and sometimes a greenish- 
blue. 

“ The most brilliantly luminescent of all marine 
worms is the tube-building Chcetopterus, whose 
light is also either violet or greenish-blue. The light¬ 
giving substance is evidently an external secretion, 
as it can be rubbed off and spread through the sur¬ 
rounding water, but its purpose remains a mystery. 
If it serves as a lure to the minute organisms on 
which the worm feeds and brings them to the mouth 
of the tube, at the same time it certainly betrays 
the worm’s whereabouts to its chief enemy, the eel, 
which hunts for the light and then pulls the worm 
out of its tube for a tasty mouthful. 

“ Among Molluscs, there is quite a variety of lu¬ 
minescent forms, chief of which are the Cephalopoda 
or cuttlefishes. Before we go on to them, however, 
ft’s perhaps wise to take a look at Pholas, that bril¬ 
liantly-shining bivalve which bores deep holes in 
stiff clay or soft rocks along the seashore, and which 
so puzzled Pliny and Aristotle a couple of thousand 
years ago. This creature, which is about the length 
of one’s finger, lives buried in the hole which it has 
bored, putting out only its long foot-head; but, from 
five different spots along this projecting body-part, 
it pours out quantities of a luminous secretion, 


270 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

thereby attracting minute organisms to the mouth 
of the tube, whence they will be pulled down by 
suction.” 

“ A sort of marine ‘ moth and the flame ’! ” the 
boy commented. 

“ So it would seem. What is important in Pholas 
is that this secretion no longer appears as a mere 
slime exuded from or forming on the skin, but is 
produced by organs definitely specialized for the pur¬ 
pose. With this difference viewed as a step onward, 
we can begin to see how it comes about that, among 
the cuttlefishes and squids, the light-organs become 
specialized, distinctive, and under the control of the 
animal. 

“ A good deal of study has been done on the light- 
organs of the Cephalopods, and it would take me 
several hours to describe the peculiarities of the 
thirty-three species in which I have found light- 
organs. The development of luminescence among 
the Mollusca is most marked, passing from forms 
merely possessing primitive light-producing glands 
—such as those of Pholas —in which the secretion 
comes in direct contact with the water, to those 
where the light-organs are deeply placed and where 
there is a special system for admitting the oxygen of 
the water to the luciferine and luciferase, and, fur- 



He Carries His Own Electric Light. 

The deep-sea fish, Gigantaclis Vanhoeffeni , from two miles down. 



Courtesy of Am. Mus. of Nat. His., N. Y. C. 


Lit Up Like an Atlantic Liner. 

The abyssal fish, Melanostomias Melanops, with rows of light organs 
shining out on either side of and beneath the body. 






Courtesy of Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist., N. Y. C. 

Dekp-ska Fish with Luminous Organs. 

Abyssal forms, living in the perpetual dark, three and four miles down in the ocean. 









IX THE HOT RIVER 


271 


ther, among the higher cuttlefish, to complex spe¬ 
cialized photogenous organs, with a cornea, a lens, 
and reflectors, the whole protected by a translucent 
capsule and bearing a curious structural resemblance 
to an eye. 

“ As might be expected from what has gone be¬ 
fore, the cuttlefish need not confine himself to any 
special color of light. In the deep-sea form Thau- 
matolampas diadema, which has no less than twenty- 
two light organs scattered over the body, ten give a 
clear white light, seven are pale green, the two anal 
lights are ruby-red, the largest light on the under 
side of the body is ultra-marine, and the two lights 
close to the eyes are sky-blue.” 

“ Has the Giant Squid any light-organs? ” 

“ Very probably, for several smaller members of 
his Family have them, but a living Giant Squid has 
never yet been seen—except by the artist’s eye of 
Chu Ting. The only complete specimen of a young 
Architeuthis ever found, which was discovered on an 
isolated beach in Iceland, was so shrivelled and dried 
up that no definite determination of its photogenous 
organs could be made. 

“ Going higher up in the zoological scale, it is 
found that many Crustacea are light-producing, the 
phenomenon being observable both in the simpler 




272 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

and the more complex forms. The little Ostracod, 
Cypridina, gives out a most brilliant blue glow. 
Many of the Copepods (such as Pseudocalanus elon - 
gatus ) emit a ‘ sacrifice lure’ secretion of a bluish- 
white color, which trails like a glowing cloud behind 
the little creature when pursued by an enemy. 

“ Among the Schizopods the light-organs have de¬ 
veloped into regular bull’s-eye lanterns, with a re¬ 
flector behind the gland producing the light and with 
a lens in front. Until the Challenger Expedition, 
and the exhaustive study made at that time, these 
organs were supposed to be eyes. 

“ These shrimp-like Schizopods, an inch or two 
long, have no less than twelve of these bull’s-eyes, 
and half a dozen of them give light enough to see to 
read a newspaper. In several species the light- 
organs are well supplied with blood and have a nerve 
system of their own. 

“ Some of the larger crabs, too, have small light- 
organs, but these need not detain us. Among the 
insects—which belong to the same phylum—we find 
the luminous fireflies and the glowworms, as well 
as some luminescent tropical spiders, but you can 
afford to let terrestrial forms alone, for a while. 

“ Going up the zoological scale, we come to light- 
organs among the Echinodermata-” 



IN THE HOT RIVER 273 

“ Sea-urchins and starfish? You mean to say, 
Professor, that such things are higher up than crabs 
and lobsters, than insects like ants, and bees and 
spiders? ” 

“ Certainly! That word 1 higher ’ is a deceptive 
term, though, Bernard, and may lead you astray. If 
you mean biological complexity, for example, then 
it must be admitted that a spider is more ‘ highly’ 
organized than a starfish, but the system of its or¬ 
ganization, none the less, is lower. The spider is 
the end of his own line. Insect development is some¬ 
thing like the sponges, where colonial protozoic de¬ 
velopment reached a high point, but then came to a 
full stop because it had taken a form which led no 
further. 

“ The crabs and the insects belong to the phylum 
Appendiculata, next in order above the Molluscs. 
All the creatures in this phylum are segmented, and, 
in the typical form, have a pair of hollow appen¬ 
dages to each segment. You can see this arrange¬ 
ment easily, in a centipede or millipede; the grub or 
caterpillar of a fly, moth, or beetle shows the same 
plan in the group popularly called ‘ insects ’; and it’s 
not difficult to follow a similar segmentation in the 
numerous joints of a shrimp or a lobster, nor yet, 
for example, in the long body of the hermit-crab, by 


274 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

which he holds himself in spiral shell which he has 
chosen for his house. 

“ The eighteen segments of a scorpion tell the 
same story, and no one who has seen the quickness 
with which a scorpion can use the dart in his tail, 
will deny the musculature of those 4 joints/ though 
it may take a little anatomical study to distinguish 
the six segments which are combined into the head 
and legs. In the spiders known as pseudo-scorpions, 
the segmentation is equally easy to see. Even in 
ordinary spiders, there is no great difficulty in fol¬ 
lowing the six first segments, including the jaws, 
pincers, and four pairs of walking legs; the rest of 
the body is often segmented—like a shortened centi¬ 
pede—by what are known as somites, and, in spiders 
which spin webs, the appendages of the hindermost 
are retained as spinnerets or spinning organs. 

“ All these appendages, however wonderfully they 
may be modified and jointed, are nothing more in 
origin than hollow pushings out of skin, and it is 
important to notice that spiracles or breathing- 
mouths may appear on every somite. This definitely 
portrays the character of segment added to segment 
instead of showing us a creature with all its parts 
subordinated to form a single individual. Even the 
‘ highest ’ adult insect—including such social groups 



IN THE HOT RIVER 275 

as the ants and the bees—has the characteristic 
marks of a centipede or even of a chsetopod worm. 

“ The real point in the zoological scale is that 
never could the external shell of any of the Appen- 
diculata—such as the crab—become the bony system 
of a vertebrate. The anatomy of the echinoderm 
shows no such obstacle.” 

“ But starfishes and sea-urchins are such slow 
and primitive things! ” 

“ As for being slow, a starfish can easily cover 
a mile a day and stop long enough to eat a couple of 
hundred mussels on the way; and as for the struc¬ 
ture, that is not as primitive as you seem to think. 
The intestine is complex, the blood system is central¬ 
ized, and breathing is by a form of external gills. 
What is more, the skin takes on the character of a 
true skin, not shell, and the cartilaginous arm-bones 
of the Brittle-Stars are inside. 

“ Now, there is a queer worm-like creature, which 
may reach the length of two feet, which burrows in 
the sand something like an earthworm, and, with 
its fixed-open mouth, eats as it goes along; this crea¬ 
ture rejoices in the name of Balanoglossus. For a 
long time scientists supposed it to be an off-type of a 
Holothurian or sea-cucumber, and therefore one of 
the Echinoderms. Later study showed that it pos- 


276 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

sessed gill-slits, and therefore Balanoglossus was 
classed among the Worms (a classification now 
abandoned). Still further study revealed skeletal 
and nerve peculiarities bringing it within measur¬ 
able distance of Amphioxus, the lancelet. Now, 
Amphioxus unquestionably possesses a notochord, 
which is the forerunner of the backbone, and is 
classed among the lower vertebrates. 

“ So you see, Bernard, from a starfish to a brittle- 
star or a sea-cucumber, thence to Balanoglossus, 
thence to the lancelet Amphioxus, thence to the 
lampreys and hagfish which have ever-open jawless 
mouths but possess a notochord, thence to the skates 
and sharks with their cartilaginous backbone, and so 
on to the true fishes and the higher vertebrates, is a 
fairly regular ascending scale. Even the first step in 
the ascent is not such a great jump, but it is one 
which could not have been made by beginning with 
the crabs, though the Chsetopod worms, very simple 
Crustacea, reveal a lower step. 

“ Let us say that the starfish are modified forms 
on a line of development, which is higher than that 
of the Appendiculata, even though the manner in 
which they are organized is less complex than the 
insects. Remember, once for all, the zoological scale 
never mounts through forms which have been highly 


277 


IN THE HOT RIVER 

modified for special adaptation, and where distinc¬ 
tive characters have become fixed, but through prim¬ 
itive and rudimentary forms. 

“ With this clearly in mind, Bernard, we can go 
back to the question of luminescence among the 
Echinoderms. They are not specially distinguished 
as light-givers, though some of the vividly-colored 
red starfish do give a roseate glow at night, but there 
is no doubt that such light-organs as they do pos¬ 
sess are closely linked up with the nervous system. 

“ The Brittle-Stars, especially, do themselves 
proud in this particular. Sir Wyville Thomson, de¬ 
scribing a deep-water form, once wrote, ‘ The light 
from Ophiacantha spinulosa, as I saw it on many 
occasions, was of a brilliant uranium green, corrus- 
cating from the centre of the disc, now along one 
arm, now along another, and sometimes vividly il¬ 
luminating the whole outline of the starfish.’ 

“ But the greatest light-giver of all the seas, Ber¬ 
nard, is Pyrosoma. This is a free-swimming colony 
of ascidians, or ascidiozooids, a degenerated group of 
the Chordata, coming in between your new friends 
Balanoglossus and Amphioxus in the zoological scale. 
You know the simple ascidian, probably, but the 
compound ascidian, or sea-squirt—of which Pyro¬ 
soma is an example—may grow to the extreme 


278 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

length of ten or twelve feet long, with hundreds of 
ascidiozooids to the inch, each one bearing two bril¬ 
liant light-organs close to the mouth, thus giving 
tens of thousands of sparkling points, some blue and 
some red. If you should write your name on the 
Pyrosoma in that jar with your finger, in a few sec¬ 
onds the letters would come out in thousands of 
sparks of light so close together that they would 
look like lines of writing. 

“ Perhaps, before passing on to the true fish, I 
might mention that the abyssal shark (Spinax niger) 
is believed to possess a luminous slime. 

“ Only four Families of fish possess light-organs, 
and one of the most extraordinary things about these 
is the manner in which they may be placed anywhere 
on the body. In a few cases (such as Melanocetus 
johnsoni, one of the angler-fish) the light is found on 
the extremity of a long flexible process which sways 
from the top of the head and hangs over the big 
mouth, so that it is probably a lure to attract prey. 

“ One of the blind fishes of the deeps, Ipnops mur- 
rayi, has two large photogenous organs covering the 
top of the head. Its blindness is a most interesting 
fact, since its cousin (also one of the Scopelidse) 
which lives a little higher up in the water has rudi¬ 
mentary eyes, another cousin swimming in a still 


279 


IN THE HOT RIVER 

higher layer has perfect but small eyes, while a rela¬ 
tive whose habitat is on the surface has large eyes. 
Yet it is the eyeless fish which possesses the light- 
organs; they certainly cannot be recognition marks, 
for he cannot see, and they cannot serve him as an 
illumination to help him catch his prey, for the same 
reason. 

“ Other fishes may have light-organs on the back 
or the sides, on the head or on the tail, some of them 
large and some small, and, as yet, science cannot 
explain either their utility nor their irregular dis¬ 
tribution. Recent study, by proving that luminosity 
is not at its strongest in the darker regions of the sea 
but rather prevails in the surface layers of tropical 
waters, has only made the mystery more obscure. 

“ So you see, Bernard, how necessary it is for us not 
to lose any chance to study these luminescent forms. 
You can realize, too, how helpful your pencil and 
brushes may be, if, when these creatures are still 
living, you can catch the exact markings and shades 
of luminosity for later study and comparison.” 

While awaiting the coming of the ocean-going tug, 
for which a wireless message had been sent, the 
Kittiwake stood by the derelict, and Professor Mc- 
Dree took advantage of the halt to make a series of 
special hauls for the taking of further luminescent 


280 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

forms. Captain Ropet’s captures with his home¬ 
made net from the deck of the derelict had shown 
that the section of the sea where he had been drift¬ 
ing, south and east of the Gulf Stream, was particu¬ 
larly rich in these light-bearing types. 

As fast as they were found, Chu Ting set the boy 
to work on them. He showed him how to use fine 
crystals of a radio-active material mixed with pow¬ 
dered glass of different colors, the rays given off by 
the radio-active crystals being reflected on and from 
the glass crowding them on all sides. This device, 
when superimposed on the old-fashioned phosphor¬ 
escent luminous paint, could be made to give a pic¬ 
ture of almost any luminous deep-sea form, a pic¬ 
ture which, when seen in a darkened room, gave a 
fair representation of the colors and luminosity of 
the original. 

Three days later, the ocean-going tug appeared, 
bringing wire cables and everything needed for a 
tow. The captain of the tugboat had made all ar¬ 
rangements to take Captain Ropet with him, and 
had even given up his own cabin for the purpose. 
But the commander of the derelict, although still 
very shaky and easily given to lapses of mind- 
control, could not be persuaded to go on board the 
tug. 


IN THE HOT RIVER 


281 


When boats from the Kittiwake aided the tug¬ 
boat’s crew to put the tow-lines aboard the derelict, 
Captain Ropet insisted on going also, and, once 
there, he refused to leave the hulk. Persuasion and 
reasoning had no effect. 

“ I stood it nine weeks without much food, savin’ 
what I could fish up,” he declared. “ I can stand it 
another week or so, when I’ve got everything I 
want. I’m aboard my own craft, an’ I command her, 
still. Thankin’ you, Cap’n, but I reckon I’ll reach 
port on the deck o’ my own ship! ” 

Bernard’s former comrade, Brown, volunteered to 
accompany the plucky skipper, if he could get per¬ 
mission from the captain of the Kittiwake, which 
was readily granted; one of the tugboat’s crew of¬ 
fered to do the same. So, under favorable skies and 
with fair weather, the derelict ploughed off under 
tow, her nose barely clear of water, Captain Ropet 
standing by the shelter beside the cargo-winch, and 
the Stars and Stripes, attached to the stump of the 
mast, floating just above the undaunted sailor’s 
head. It was a very different picture from that 
which the Kittiwake*s searchlight had first disclosed 
—the madman crouched on the deck, singing wildly, 
and rocking a glass jar of luminescent sea-creatures 
for his only comfort and his only light. 


282 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

Shortly before noon, next day, the Kittiwake’s 
engines stopped. 

Bernard looked up from his drawing with surprise, 
for he knew that, because of the delays which had 
been caused by the finding of the derelict and the 
waiting until the arrival of the tugboat, the expedi¬ 
tion was several days behind schedule. It had been 
planned, therefore, to drive on steadily into the 
northern seas, or, at least, into the immediate neigh¬ 
borhood of icebergs. 

Professor McDree was anxious to make a special 
study of the question whether floating bergs, bring¬ 
ing cold water with them, also brought northern 
species of plankton and of fish with them into the 
warmer seas. Such a fact, if it could be proved, 
might help to settle some of the problems concern¬ 
ing the irregular distribution of plankton in the 
North Atlantic Ocean. For this purpose, systematic 
net-hauling was necessary, and that at fair depths, 
for many icebergs have their bases 400 to 500 feet 
under water. 

What did this stoppage of the Kittiwake signify? 
Always curious for novelty, Bernard burst out of the 
laboratory and went on deck, to find most of the 
scientists gathered on deck. Clearly, there was some 
reason for this. 


IN THE HOT RIVER 288 

“ Want to take a swim? ” queried Professor Mc- 
Dree, as soon as he saw the boy. 

“ What for, sir? ” 

“ I thought you were fond of swimming! You 
seemed so, in the Sargasso Sea.” 

Bernard made a grimace at the remembrance. 

“ I wasn’t exactly swimming for the fun of it, 
then! ” said he. 

“ Do it for the fun of it, now. Just strip and 
jump in.” 

“ And after? ” 

“ Swim ’round to the other side of the ship—either 
by the bow or the stern, as you choose—and come 
aboard again.” 

Bernard looked around doubtfully, thinking that 
the chief of the expedition must be chaffing, but 
Montgomery and Bower, who were standing near, 
nodded in agreement. 

“Go ahead, lad!” urged Montgomery. “We 
won’t leave you behind! ” 

“ Queer deal! ” muttered Bernard to himself, but 
he slipped off his clothes, as desired, and dived from 
the rail. 

The water was a good deal colder than he had 
anticipated, a great deal lower in temperature than 
that of the Sargasso Sea, surprisingly cold, in fact. 


284 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

He was glad to strike out strongly to keep himself 
from getting chilled. A score or so of strokes took 
him to the ship’s bow, and, glancing up, the boy 
noticed that several of the scientists, on deck, were 
following him around. 

Just as he crossed in front of the cutwater, he 
struck what seemed like a dense but invisible curtain 
in the water, barring his way. He gasped with the 
shock and the surprise of it, for this unseen resist¬ 
ance certainly felt uncanny. The water had a 
viscous feel as though it were in process of becoming 
thick like molasses, and yet it suggested a wall. It 
was curious and extremely unpleasant, like some ef¬ 
fect of evil sorcery. 

But he had been told to swim around the ship, 
so Bernard lowered his head, swung his right arm 
over, and put all the force of his muscles into a cou¬ 
ple of sweeping strokes of the “ Australian crawl,” 
in order to overcome this invisible obstacle. 

At the same instant, it seemed as though a hand 
pushed him up from beneath, and, as he crossed the 
line, his body rose as if he were going over a hurdle; 
his head was burning, his feet, ice-cold. 

A couple more vigorous strokes brought him clear 
round the bow and out on the starboard side of the 
ship. 


IN THE HOT RIVER 285 

Looking up, he saw the Professor gazing down 
with a smile of interest and curiosity. 

“ Why! ” called Bernard, spluttering, “it's boil¬ 
ing hot! ” 

“ Not boiling, hardly,” the scientist corrected. 
“ But I wanted to see if you’d find it hot exactly on 
the line of demarcation. You’ve just swum into the 
Gulf Stream! ” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 

“ My word! " ejaculated Bernard, as he clambered 
on board, “ I hadn't any idea that the edge of the 
Gulf Stream was so sharply marked! ” 

“ And the line of temperature difference is even 
sharper on the northern edge! " Professor McDree 
declared. “ Once, coming from the Labrador Cur¬ 
rent, I lowered two thermometers over the side sim¬ 
ultaneously, and registered fifty-six degrees (Fahr.) 
at the bow, and only thirty-four degrees at the stern, 
a difference of twenty-two degrees in less than the 
ship's length. That’s on the surface. At a depth of 
100 fathoms, I’ve registered below freezing (thirty- 
two degrees Fahr.) and, twenty minutes later, after 
crossing the ‘ cold wall ’ between the two currents, 
at the same depth the thermometer has registered 
nearly seventy degrees." 

“ And the Gulf Stream runs, as hot as that, all the 
way to Europe? " 

“ By no means! After leaving the Newfoundland 
Banks, it decreases a great deal both in speed and 

temperature. Tides and ocean currents form a very 

286 


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A Blind Vampire Form. 

Lower Ocean Depths. 




287 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 

complicated part of oceanography, and, since they 
afford no food for your pencil, Bernard, I wouldn’t 
bother about them, if I were you. 

“ The main principles of oceanic circulation, which 
are all that you need to know, are simple. There 
is the Tidal Wave, caused by the attraction of the 
sun and the moon, which rises and falls every twelve 
and one-half hours, causing tidal currents near land 
or over oceanic shoals; such currents have been de¬ 
tected as far down as 400 fathoms. There are the 
Wind Waves, generally the result of steady air cur¬ 
rents, such as the trade winds or monsoons, the ef¬ 
fect of which may be felt 100 fathoms down. There 
are the Seiches, or oscillation currents, due to the 
juxtaposition of layers of water of different tem¬ 
peratures. 

“ Finally, there are the true Oceanic Currents, 
such as the Gulf Stream, which are caused by the 
heating of the sea in the tropics, by the differing 
density and salinity of the water in differing regions 
—of which the high evaporation and great salinity of 
the Gulf of Mexico, and the freshening of oceanic 
water where the Amazon pours out its mighty flood, 
may be taken as examples. 

“ All these are modified and changed in direction 
by the rotation of the Earth, since the sea, being 


288 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

a liquid, drags behind the rigidly compressed in¬ 
terior. Such are the main principles, but, the min¬ 
ute you want details, you find yourself in a maze of 
astronomical calculation to explain the causes, and 
you require some hundreds of charts to portray the 
effects.” 

“I think I’d rather paint luminous jellyfish!” 
the boy declared. 

“ Personally, I’d rather dissect them,” the Pro¬ 
fessor agreed, smiling, “ but every man to his own 
bent. Montgomery, for instance, is far happier with 
his charts and his calculations. 

“ For purposes of navigation, an exact knowledge 
of ocean currents—far more exact than we have now 
—is all-important. Such disasters as the loss of the 
Titanic are due to icebergs brought down into the 
Gulf Stream by ocean currents from the north, and 
if the Ice Patrol had existed at that time, that fear¬ 
ful loss of life would never have happened. 

“ Even now, it is estimated that sixty per cent, of 
the vessels wrecked in the open sea go down from 
striking derelicts—just such derelicts as the one on 
which we found Captain Ropet.” 

“ But do wrecks really drift so fast? ” 

“ Fast enough to be a real peril. Taking the North 
Atlantic, alone, the Equatorial Stream flows west- 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 


289 


ward at nearly three miles per hour, the Gulf Stream 
flows northeastward four miles an hour, and the 
Labrador Current flows southward two miles an 
hour. Each of these acts and counteracts on the 
other, not to speak of the minor currents, of water 
movements brought about by protracted tempests, 
and of the changes of the seasons. 

“ Notice, Bernard, even if a derelict drifts only 
two miles an hour, that’s close to fifteen hundred 
miles a month, or enough to carry a submerged 
wreck across the Atlantic in two months, if it went 
in a straight line.” 

“ As much as that? ” 

“ Fully! Now, suppose a berg or a derelict is re¬ 
ported at a certain latitude and longitude. A vessel 

/ 

coming three days later in a direction opposite to 
that of the drift of the berg or wreck, might strike 
it at 150 miles from the point where it was last re¬ 
ported, in other words, several hours before it would 
be thought necessary to reduce speed and to estab¬ 
lish special lookouts. Whereas, if the strength and 
direction of every vagary of every ocean current 
was exactly known, the captain of the vessel would 
have been able to figure out how far that menace to 
navigation would have drifted, and he would have 
been able to steer a course of safety. 


290 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

“ Unfortunately, the courses of such derelicts are 
extremely erratic. Take a couple of examples. The 
Fannie Wolston, wrecked off the coast of Florida, 
drifted half-way to Africa, made a complicated 
‘ figure 8 * in mid-Atlantic, drifted south, doubled 
back on its course, did the ‘ outside edge ’ in a com¬ 
plete circle north of the West Indies, struck up 
northward, and was finally destroyed by a Coast 
Guard Cutter, not far from Bermuda, about three 
hundred miles from where it had started, having 
travelled more than four thousand miles meanwhile. 

“ The W . L. White , wrecked off New York, drifted 
to within a hundred miles of the place where the 
Fannie Wolston had been abandoned, and then, in¬ 
stead of following the former derelict’s track, as 
might have been expected, got snapped into the Gulf 
Stream. In this it kept a general northeastward 
course to mid-Atlantic, made an equilateral triangle 
of about two hundred miles to each side, came back 
to its course, made a small‘ figure 8 ’ farther on, and 
then a larger ‘ lovers’-knot,’ struck due east towards 
the Azores, bent its course sharply northeastward, 
just grazed the coast of Ireland, and finally stranded 
on the beach of one of the Hebrides Islands; the dis¬ 
tance covered was over five thousand miles, and the 
voyage took ten months and a half.” 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 291 

“ And, during all that time, the wreck of the W. 
L. White was a menace to ships? ” 

“ Every minute of the time. It is estimated that, 
counting all the oceans, there are never less than 
two hundred icebergs, derelicts, mines, spars, or 
masses of floating wreckage large enough to sink a 
ship which strikes them, and nearly a hundred of 
these are in the North Atlantic, alone. That is why 
wireless warnings are constantly being sent through 
the air, every shipmaster warning his fellow-mariners 
of a danger he has seen and escaped. These are 
listed by the U. S. Navy Radio Stations, and a 
broadcast message, enumerating the exact location 
of all such ocean dangers, is sent out every day.” 

“ Good thing, too! ” 

“ The International Ice Patrol, conducted by the 
United States, under international support and as¬ 
sistance, has, for its special work, not only the loca¬ 
tion of icebergs brought down into the lanes of 
travel, but also the detailed studv of the currents 
which have brought them there. Ocean currents are 
so complex, and the difference of drift between a 
deep and a surface berg are so great, that the Coast 
Guard cutters detailed to this service have to dodge 
here and there, constantly watching the five or six 
most southerly and most dangerous bergs, like a 


292 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

little goose-girl trying to keep track of half a dozen 
restless geese that won’t keep together.” 

“ And are there any icebergs in the Gulf Stream, 
now? ” 

“ Several. The Coast Guard Cutter Modoc has 
just sent out a warning of a pinnacle berg which is 
well down into the Gulf Stream, and which is of 
good size though melting fast. We ought to sight 
her, the day after to-morrow.” 

The prophecy was justified. Early in the morn¬ 
ing, sea-gulls and petrels of various species were 
seen, among them dovekies, fulmars, black-backs, 
and murres. The last was accepted as a clear sign 
of ice, for the murre is exclusively a cold-water bird, 
and is rarely seen below the limit of the Gulf Stream, 
except in attendance on a berg. In the early sum¬ 
mer, or “ iceberg season,” careful ship-captains keep 
a shrewd eye on the species of sea-gulls seen around 
a ship. 

Just before noon, the berg was seen. It was evi¬ 
dently a large one and must have been broken off 
one of the main Greenland glaciers. On one side, it 
had a towering pinnacle, 125 feet high, and this was 
much eaten out and honeycombed near the edge of 
the water; there was also a much larger, flattened 
berg, scalene-triangled in shape, about ninety feet 



The First Iceberg of the Season. 

The U. S. S. Seneca locating the advance of these menaces to navigation 
and mapping the ocean currents that bring them. 



Courtesy of U. S. Coast Guard. 


Still a Monster, Though in Warm Water. 

Pinnacle berg on the edge of the Gulf Stream, having a large 
underwater “ram,” photographed from the deck of the 

U. S. S. Tampa. 












Courtesy of U. S. Coast Guard. 

Oceanographic Work in Winter. 

Soundings being taken over the Newfoundland Banks in bitter weather. 



Hove To in a Full Gale. 

TJ- S. S. Seneca battling against an Arctic tempest, ice making on deck; 
the oceanographic tests were taken, none the less. 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 


293 


high, the lower part sheer to the water, the upper 
part being a series of flattened but sloping planes. 
It was, perhaps, an eighth of a mile across. These 
looked like two bergs, yet were but one, connected 
under water, though how far the deadly “ ice-ram ” 
projected on every side, it was impossible to say. 
Several blackfish, or “ ca’ing whales ” were seen near 
it, evidently visitors from the far north. 

Extremely careful observations of changes in the 
water temperature and in the air temperature were 
taken, the Kittiwake approaching at a snails pace. 
The scientific observers found, definitely, that 
neither of these temperature forewarnings would be 
of the slightest service to a ship advancing even at 
the half-speed of ten knots, since the first indication 
of temperature change, either of air or water, could 
not be secured more than a minute before striking, 
therefore much too late to be of use. 

The Kittiwake sidled up slowly, a fe^ revolutions 
at a time, to make sure not to strike, threaded her 
way through the “ growlers ” or small blocks of ice 
broken off from the parent mass, and found deep 
water on the triangular side of the berg. As the 
study of marine life-forms in the cold water imme¬ 
diately surrounding an iceberg was one of the pur¬ 
poses of the expedition, the vessel was made fast to 


294 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

the ice with specially prepared grapple-hooks and 
long lines, careful examination of the triangular berg 
having been made, to make sure that it would not 
“ calve/' or turn over suddenly. 

No sooner had the ship made fast, when, to the 
amazement of every one on board, a half-grown polar 
bear cub came round a corner of the berg, and peered 
down curiously at the ship. It at once caught the 
eager attention of Bernard. 

“ What a jolly little chap! ” cried the lad. “ Oh, 
Professor McDree, do let's go and get it for a mas¬ 
cot! ” 

“ And have Mamma Bear swallow you down in 
about two bites? " 

“ There isn’t any mother bear around! I’m sure 
there isn't! If there had been, she'd have come 
first! " 

“ She'd have done nothing of the kind. She’d 
have taken to the water long ago. Maybe, as you 
say, the cub is all alone. Perhaps it got stranded on 
the berg when it drifted away from Greenland, and 
was too small to swim back." 

“ Please—can I go get it? ” 

“ You mean—just pick it up in your arms, like 
that? " 

“ Why not? It isn't any bigger than my New- 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 295 

foundland dog, at home, and I’ve carried him, 
often! ” 

“ But it’s got longer claws, my boy, and even a 
half-grown cub’s bite will reach to the bone! No, 
that’s no task for a lad like you. Take a rifle, and 
get the fur, if you like.” 

“ A little orphan bear cub! Oh, Professor! ” 

Bernard protested no farther, but disappeared for¬ 
ward. 

At eight bells, when the watch was relieved, one 
of the men came aft to the officer of the watch, and 
respectfully asked that a party might be allowed to 
capture the polar bear cub as a mascot for the crew. 
The question was referred to the captain of the 
Kittiwake, who had already been told of Bernard’s 
urgent demand. It was not difficult to guess where 
the sailor’s idea had come from, and the captain re¬ 
plied, with a twinkle in his eye: 

“ Very good. Perhaps it may be found to be a 
‘ new species! ’ ” 

And the chase was on. 

With four sturdy sailors, each armed with a rope, 
the chase of the polar bear cub did not seem danger¬ 
ous, and Bernard secured permission to accompany 
them, the men being strictly warned to keep the 
impetuous lad from risking himself too close. 


296 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

At first, it seemed nothing but a romp. The four 
sailors and Bernard dropped on the ice from a rope 
swung from the fore-yard, and started to pursue the 
little bear. The berg was of good size, and the 
half-grown cub, with his padded hairy feet, could 
run and climb about the slippery ice as if it were a 
level floor, while the sailors slid, and slipped, and 
scrambled about, amid shouts of laughter from the 
crew on deck who were watching the ludicrous tum¬ 
bles. 

At last, one rope fell fair over the head of the 
cub, but, before the noose could be drawn tight, the 
bear put one foot through it. At the tightening, 
therefore, the rope was around one shoulder, instead 
of getting the expected choking hold about the neck. 
Frightened, the cub tore to the ice-cliff’s edge, and 
dived into the water. The sailor, who had thrown 
the rope, tripped and fell, and the trailing line 
swished past Bernard’s feet. Instinctively he 
grabbed at it, and, an instant later, found himself 
pulled over the edge and falling into the icy water. 

This was a very different matter from the warm 

waters of the Sargasso Sea, and Bernard gasped with 

the shock. For a second or two, it took his breath 
» 

away. 

He had no intention of being towed off by a polar 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 


297 


bear as he had been by a turtle, and, remembering 
his former predicament, he let go the rope. After 
all, he thought quickly, the cub could not escape 
very far. 

Burdened with his heavy clothing, and with his 

shoes laced on, the boy turned to swim for the ship, 

for a single glance sufficed to show him that there 

was no way of climbing up the sheer sides of the 

triangular berg, from which he had been pulled. 

This course towards the ship took him out of sight 

0 

of the sailors on the berg, who, knowing that the 
boy was a first-class swimmer, were laughing at his 
ducking. In a few strokes he rounded the corner of 
the berg, in full view of the ship. 

Suddenly, he heard a startled cry from the deck: 

“ Look alive! He’s after you! ” 

And Bernard, casting a glance over his shoulder, 
saw the polar bear cub, its long neck outstretched, 
in full pursuit, its speed fortunately checked by the 
long trailing rope. 

Undoubtedly famished, marooned as it had been 
on the berg, with, perhaps, only an occasional foray 
for fish, the young bear was desperate with hunger 
and ready for anything. The idea had not occurred 
to it to make any attack on the ice-floe, for instinct 
had suggested nothing but fear of its biped pursuers; 


298 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 


but Bernard, in the water, in his dark clothes, looked 
enough like a swimming seal to awaken the bear’s 
hunting instinct. 

The boy heard a crisp order in the captain’s au¬ 
thoritative voice: 

“ Tell the gunner’s mate to bring a rifle! Lively, 
now! ” 

Then, like a flash, a lean yellow body leapt from 
ship’s stern, plunging full into the water between 
pursuer and pursued, startling the bear for a second 
and halting it in its course. 

It was Chu Ting! 

He came up a second later, his pigtail trailing 
behind him, his narrow eyes glittering, a long thin 
knife in his hand. 

“ Dodge back through the growlers to the other 
berg,” he cried; “ the rope may catch and give you a 
chance! When you reach the berg, the men will 
throw you a rope! ” 

“ But you-” began the boy. 

“ Do what you are told! ” 

Not even the captain of the Kittiwake could put 
such absolute authority in his voice as the China¬ 
man, when he wished to do so. That he was of man¬ 
darin stock, no one ever doubted. 

Bernard, terribly handicapped by his clothing, 



THE ICEBERG BEAR 


299 


turned and swam back, twisting and turning among 
the small blocks of ice and the larger growlers, so 
that, in case the bear were following, the rope might 
become entangled. 

At the same time that the captain had called for 
a rifle, the sailors on the berg had been warned by 
shouts from their comrades on board. One of them 
had started to swim for the pinnacle berg, which, in 
spite of its height, afforded several easy landing- 
places, where Bernard could be helped up. 

Another of them, who had scrambled round the 
edge of the berg, to find out if he could be of service, 
saw the bear, after a moment’s hesitation, give up 
the chase of Bernard and turn upon its new foe. 
The Chinaman was treading water, waiting, knife in 
hand. 

In such an uneven duel, the peril was extreme, 
and the sailor saw a way to help. Launching him¬ 
self into space, with a violent leap, he landed full on 
the bear’s neck with both feet. The jolt was terrific, 
for a moment or two paralyzing both legs of the 
heroic rescuer, but, at the same time, it half-stunned 
the bear, which swam around in circles, as though 
dazed. Presently, it came to itself and again lunged 
forward. The situation was critical for the half- 
grown cub, absolutely aquatic in its habits, was a 


300 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

match for half a dozen men, in the water. But the 
trailing rope annoyed it and distracted its at¬ 
tention. Deeming it an enemy—possibly a serpent 
of some kind—it wasted time and energy snapping 
at the rope and trying to free itself. 

Once the bear came near enough to make a snap 
at Chu Ting, but the sailor yanked on the rope in 
time, to pull the jaw away; again, it lunged open- 
mouthed at the sailor, but Chu Ting drove his keen 
thin knife into the muscles of the neck, taking care 
not to give a mortal injury. 

At the same moment, one of the sharpshooters ap¬ 
peared at the ship’s rail, rifle in hand, awaiting the 
command to fire. 

Chu Ting looked up calmly, and his voice was as 
unimpassioned and measured as ever. 

“ There is no need to shoot, as yet,” said he; “ wait 
until there is danger! ” 

And the bear, while he thus spoke, was not more 
than five yards away! 

All this happened with extreme quickness, and the 
Chinaman had hardly finished speaking, when the 
boat shot round the stern of the ship. This decided 
the combat, and instantly! Two men with boat¬ 
hooks easily kept the bear cub off while Chu Ting 
and the bruised sailor climbed into the gig. The 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 


301 


end of the rope with which the cub had been lassoed 
was hitched to the end of a rope thrown from the 
ship, making it a prisoner. 

Scarcely had this been achieved, when there was 
heard a grinding rip, a crackle, and an enormous 
splash. 

The part of the pinnacle berg, on which Bernard 
had just climbed in an exhausted state, and which 
was already undercut and out of balance by the 
proximity of the warm Gulf Stream water, could not 
support the sudden weight of Bernard and the sailor, 
and the berg “ calved.” A huge piece from the side 
split, cracked away from its base, and crumbled, alter¬ 
ing the gravity of the higher pinnacle; this, in turn, 
began to totter, and then turned over with a crash, 
flinging the boy once more into the water, amid a 
churning riot of huge ice-fragments and brash. 

Scarcely able to keep afloat, almost with a drown¬ 
ing grasp, Bernard snatched at one of the numerous 
pieces of driftwood which are usually to be found 
around icebergs, and which looked like a piece of a 
“ trade ” canoe-paddle as sold to the Eskimos. He 
had scarcely done more than seize it, when a block 
of ice, threshing up behind, struck him on the back 
of the head. The blow stunned him, and he would 
have sunk, then and there, with all the weight of 


302 HUNTERS OF OCEAN DEPTHS 

his clothing, had it not been for his drowning grip 
on the driftwood he had seized. 

The boat came round the corner of the triangular 

berg, just in time to see the second smash. 

« 

As before, it was Chu Ting who moved the fastest. 
Already stripped, he plunged in again, cleaving the 
water like a swordfish. In a few strokes he was be¬ 
side the boy, and had gripped him by the hair. It 
was but the work of a moment to bring up the boat, 
and to lift the insensible lad in it, and to hurry him 
back on board. 

In fact, the polar bear cub and the boy reached 
the deck of the Kittiwake at about the same mo¬ 
ment, the bear swaying his long neck, and snapping 

# 

silently at any one who came near. The boy re¬ 
mained unconscious. 

It had been a nasty blow, though not a dangerous 
one. In less than an hour the lad came to, but 
sleepily, for the doctor had already given him a stiff 
dose to counteract the shock of the cold and the 
exhaustion. By evening, Bernard woke, refreshed, 
and, except for a big lump on the back of his head 
and a general sense of lassitude and fatigue, he felt 
none the worse for his misadventure. 

He woke to find Chu Ting and Professor McDree 
standing beside his bunk, the latter with an enig- 


303 


THE ICEBERG BEAR 

matic smile of welcome and satisfaction, the China¬ 
man as impassive as ever. In the Professor’s hand 
was the half of the Eskimo paddle, worm-eaten and 
covered with weeds and barnacles, which the boy 
had clutched at the moment of the calving of the 
berg. 

On seeing the boy’s eyes open, and wakefulness 
come into them, Chu Ting took his hand from be¬ 
hind his back, and displayed a drawing of a stalk-like 
creature, with a milky-white double shell, splotched 
with orange, and with long hair-like legs, striped 
black and white. 

“ What’s that? ” queried the boy. “ It looks like 
a barnacle.” 

“ It is one! That,” said the Professor, pointing 
to a colored spot on the piece of driftwood which he 
held in his hand, “ is ‘ Lepas Bernardi 1 ! 77 

The boy leaped out of his bunk in his excitement. 

“ A new species? Is it? And I found it? Hon¬ 
est?” 

“ Unquestionably! Even if it took a polar bear 
cub to show you how, Bernard, you’ve put your name 
forever on the Zoological list of fame! ” 


THE END 

















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